Alix Cleo Roubaud (1952–1983)

Alix Cleo Roubaud was a brilliantly gifted writer and photographer. She had an extremely acute mind and a stunning body to go with it. She liked to photograph herself nude in a sparse room and then do magic in her darkroom. She often thought of killing herself. She was seriously asthmatic since childhood. She died of a pulmonary embolism at the age of thirty-one. She was in love with a poet. It may not have been a good thing. He thinks it was. She had her doubts. Alix had good form, style, and knew how to dress. More importantly, for me, she knew how to undress. I love her breasts, or what I can see of them. I imagine dark nipples behind gauze fabric. Her legs were beautiful. I would have liked to move my finger softly across her lips. I would have pressed. She was very pretty in a French sort of way. She was from Canada, but born in Mexico. Bi-lingual and well-traveled at a young age. Left Canada in 1972 to study philosophy at the University of Aix-en-Provence primarily out of her chronic need for an excellent health care system and the fact that in France it was free. She was fascinated with her study of Wittgenstein. Benjamin came second. Alix drank alcohol heavily and I am not sure why. Demons perhaps. Restlessness maybe. Depression, why not. There is a fog made by drinking beer. She had many friends, or so it seemed. Her best friend committed suicide. In analysis she discovered she herself lived in tableaus vivants. She also experienced lethargy, fainting, back pain, and nervousness. All of them, in her mind, not related to her asthmatic condition. She made a film with Jean Eustache titled Les Photos d'Alix. She made notes for this film in preparation for her commentaries addressed to students. She somewhat explains her positions on photography. Or feels she has to. Alix was a writer who turned to photography and the making of images because of her spouse, the poet, and his greater talent for words. In her photography Alix attempted to re-stage memory. She did not perform text. She claimed doing that made it fiction. She photographed what was disposable. Mainly herself.… (mais)