Mocambo, Veracruz, circa 20 December 1967

Of late I have been giving the subject of what thought is a thought. We often say to ourselves, “I think I am going to sleep now.” That action is obviously a conscious thought.

When I look at the portrait of Rosemary and me taken in Mocambo Beach in Veracruz sometime around 22 December of 1967, is the impression that immediately comes to my mind some kind of thought or is it a different one? People who think of the past might have memories and they go through them. In my case when I see this portrait, my memory is perhaps more complete? Are the memories/thoughts of a portrait photographer who photographed his family extensively different?

My memory of my mother is also coaxed along when I see her portraits on my walls.

After a 52 year marriage, my thoughts on missing the presence of my Rosemary are constant. I cannot escape them, and I must admit I do not try to escape them.

I have written about this photograph before. I will repeat it again. I met Rosemary, from New Dublin, Ontario, around the 15^th of December, 1967 in Mexico City. By the 21^st I drove with her in my VW Beetle to Veracruz so that she would meet my mother. On 8 February 1968 we were married by a judge in the historically lovely Coyoacán neighbourhood where Frida Kahlo lived.

I cannot emphasize enough that this nicely framed photograph in my living room is a result of:

1. I took the photograph with my Pentacon-F (purchased for $100 from Adorama in NYCity in 1958) which happened to have a self-timer. I put it on a tripod and took the picture. The camera was loaded with Kodak colour negative ISO 100 film.

2. Because my eldest daughter Alexandra, in the late 80s, began to nicely file my photographs, negatives and slides in metal cabinets, I can find stuff. I was able to print this negative, quite pristine in spite of the years that have gone by.

3. The technology of this 21^st century means that I can use my scanner to scan old negatives, slides and photographs. This I did with my Mocambo shot. My Epson P700 is a very good printer and I happen to be a good printer myself.

For a near future, once I have met my inexorable oblivion, my filing cabinets will remain for anybody who might be interested. Meanwhile I have stored all (or most) of my important digital camera and phone camera shots in two exterior hard drives. Even though I know digital camera storage cards can deteriorate with time I have them neatly arranged by dates in a box. I never erase my storage cards. I get new ones.

This blog is the result of having looked at the Mocambo photograph this morning.

July 13, 2025

In 1962 Mexican president Adolfo López Mateos decided that he wanted to be seen not only as a president but as a statesman so he went on a tour of the orient. I remember distinctly reading in the important daily, the Excelsior a shocking headline that the president had gone to bed with a mistress in the Philippines. It was a sort of joke in bad taste as the mistress in question was a pillow. Filipinos, to fight their stifling night-time heat, had the custom of sleeping with a pillow between their legs.

Since I can remember I have always done that. As a little boy I had a tiny yellow almohadita (little pillow). I was told my mother that since I was growing up I could not sleep with that little pillow. But I continued the custom always making sure my bed had two pillows. In hotels, when Rosemary and I travelled, I always made sure our bed had 3 or 4 pillows.

Even when it is not hot I feel comfortable with that one pillow between my legs that I then hug. With Rosemary now gone, that pillow is awfully important.

Rosa 'Ketchup & Mustard' & Hosta 'Wheee!' 12 July 2025

My Rosemary, whose interest in gardening transferred to me (with  some not so gentle pushing), taught me from the beginning to learn the proper botanical name of our plants. Because my first interest began with hostas I understood her. As a member of the American Hosta Society I found out that my fellow members were finicky and persnickety about using the correct nomenclature of their plants.

Another reason for using botanical names is that you are precise and if you use a common name confusions happen.

And so the Western Red Cedar in our former garden in my mind became a Thuja plicata. In botanical names that has to be written in italics. If the plant is a cultivar (usually because of human intervention and hybridizing) the name is not in italics and it is between single quotes.

What you see in the scan today is Hosta ‘Wheee!’ and Rosa ‘Ketchup & Mustard’. Those names are funny and don’t sound as complicated as the botanical name of a Douglas Fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii.

Rosemary was not alive to smile at the name of the two plants in this blog. What is interesting is that the hosta is the first plant (anywhere in the world) with an exclamation sign as part of its name. When I smell this rose somehow my imagination makes it seem like there is some Heinz in it.

Addendum: My friend Clarence Falstad, a member of the American Hosta Society who works for the very good Michigan nursery Walters Gardens and is in charge with patenting new plants has told me that Canada has rejected the name of Hosta 'Wheee!' because of its exclamation mark.

Transprency and Print

Two Transparencies

The term "pushing the envelope" originally comes from the field of aviation. It is a reference to the flyable portion of the atmosphere that envelopes the earth. Pilots would push the envelope when they were testing the speed or elevation limits of new aircraft. The term entered the mainstream by way of Tom Wolfe's novel The Right Stuff.

For about 3 years I have been using the technique that I call (with a smile) “Scanner negative sandwiches without mayonnaise”. I put one negative, be it colour or b+w, or a slide, on top of each other and scan them together with my Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner. The results are especially good if the negatives, etc are from the same photo session.

Scanner Negative Sandwiches Without Mayonnaise   

I have been made aware that I can do this with Photoshop Layers. I opt for the more mechanical one. But then, what do I do with digital photographs if I cannot scan them and I will not do layers?

In the middle of the night, one night ago, I had a dream that started with “The Theremin Man”.  The Theremin Man is Stephen Hamm the former bass player of the notorious punk band Slow. On the 10^th of December of 2022 I was contacted by Hamm who wanted me to take some photographs of him to help promote him. He never did use my photographs in which I used my digital Fuji X-E3 and lit him with my ProPhoto ring flash.

Zemblanity, Serendipity & a Slow Christmas 

L to R - Christian Thorvaldson, Steven Hamm, Ziggy Sigmund, Terry Russell & Thomas Anselmi

In the dream I came up with the idea of making two inkjet transparencies (slides) of two of the photographs and scanning them together with one flipped. The I used another technique of printing one of them and scanning it with the transparency.

I am happy with the results happy to keep on innovating using the technology of the 20^th century (my scanner and 20-year-old Photoshop 8 ) with the advances of this century, my Fuji X-E3 and the availability of that wonderful inkjet paper and transparency printed on my very good Epson P700 printer.

Rosemary & Alexandra

 

Sometime in the early 80s, Carole Taylor posed for me in one of the corridors of the CBC on Hamilton Street. I pointed my camera and thought, “If only she would tilt her head a tad to the left.” Like magic she did that and followed all my other posing thoughts. For years I told everybody she was the easiest and best woman to face my camera.

Tonight, now 11 July 2025, while in bed, I suddenly had the realization that my Rosemary, just like Taylor, could divine my thoughts. I was simply too blind to figure it out. The two framed photographs that I have scanned together are some of my most favourite portraits that in Spanish we call “instantáneas” or grab shots. I gave no instructions. In the Veracruz norte (a big wind) I lucked out in 1968 with my Pentax S-3 and Kodak Tri-X. In the second photograph, circa 1973 taken in Arboledas, Estado de México in our nearby park “Los Bebederos” designed by famous Mexican architect Luis Barragan I again just pressed the shutter.

Now in embarrassing retrospect I know that I never had to tell Rosemary how to pose. I just waited and clicked the shutter.

Rosemary was the first woman I ever photographed nude. This was in 1969. Then for years I collected photographs of as many women that would face my camera with nothing on.

Thinking hard, I now also know that I learned to be a good portrait photographer because I had an excellent muse/mentor.

I will regret until oblivion takes me, that I never did point my camera at Rosemary much more than I did. In Mexico they would say, “Alex eres un pendejo.” In my Buenos Aires it would be, “Alex sos un pelotudo.”

Yes, to both!

And thinking hard I also know that I learned be a good portrait photographer because I had an excellent muse/mentor.