15 March 2025

Of late I write a lot about my advanced age of 82 and how since the death of my Rosemary on 9 December 2020 I have little inclination to go alone to concerts, theatre and dance. I particularly avoid the large, and to me cold venues like the Queen Elizabeth Theatre and the Chan Centre.

The Orpheum for me is now an exercise in nostalgia for the warm personality of Bramwell Tovey. Few people that I ask now know who heads the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

 I think this city is culturally sterile. We have no real newspapers that inform us of cultural events in theatre, music and dance. And our CBC is now vacant in cultural programming with the exception of Ideas, Reclaimed and that intelligent The Debaters.

There is a happy exception. This is to be in the email lists of your fave groups. Many of those are headed by virtuoso violinist Cameron Wilson who is as busy as Leslie Dala. I reckon that their families no longer recognize them as they are rarely home! Another email  list of mine included The Turning Point Ensemble ,Yarilo and the Microcosmos Quartet.

Tonight I went with my designer friend Graham Walker to a concert called Get Back Unplugged - The Beatles Reimagined. It was held at the West Vancouver Yacht Club. After a longish trek on a curvy road we arrived to find ourselves in an out-of-context situation of seeing elderly people having dinner at many long tables. It occurred to me that I was probably older than most of them. A reality check it became for me. I first heard the Beatles single Love Me Do in 1962 when I was 20 in the house of a Yorkshire friend in Mexico City. Yes, last night I was one very old man.

 Cameron Wilson - violin, vocals

Andrew Hillhouse - guitar, vocals,

LJ Mounteney - vocals, ukulele, percussion

Allan Dionne - accordion, vocals

David Gibbons - guitar, vocals

Brent Gubbels - bass

The band, a most definitely not a cover band, played many Beatles songs that this musical ignoramus had no memory of ever hearing before. Thanks to my Beatles expert, Graham Walker I was clued in.

Such is the virtuosity of this band that I marvelled at how some of their Beatles versions sounded like Nova Scotia folk music or Tina Turner versions. The female singer  L.J. Mounteney performed her Turner impression and her singing throughout the night was stellar, and in particular, with all her little noise making devices.

The evening’s revelation to this amateur music critic, was the combination (they played on opposite sides) of British electric guitar/singer David Gibbons and accordionist/singer Allan Dionne (consider that I do not like the accordion!).

Mentioning those three performers does not take away from the other three who are a group called The Wahs. Cameron Wilson played his violin with dazzling virtuosity. Guitarist and singer Andrew Hillhouse injected his strong singing personality and bassist Brent Gubbles made his bass be the steady pillar of the group. I can only add that Gubbles follows the Vancouver tradition, perhaps begun by Mark Haney (he of the Isolation Commissions during the Covid pandemic), of bassists being extremely handsome.

I find it perplexing that there is so much musical talent in this city and that only a few lucky few like me are aware. CBC wake up!

Photograph - Curtis Daily - 10 March 2025

Gary Cullen - 28 November 2024

The more I survive into this 21st century the more I am amazed of situations that have persisted (continued?) since I was very young.

The camera in this scan is an East German Pentacon-F (the nomenclature on the bottom plate of the camera reads – Russian occupied Germany) I purchased in 1958 from Olden Cameras in New York for $100. I was at the time a boarder in a Roman Catholic high school in Austin called St. Edwards. At the time popular cameras were rangefinders and these SLRs were the new kids on the block.

I had saved for the purchase from a job cleaning and catching mice at Brother Edwin Reggio CSC’s band room. I played the alto saxophone for the school band and jazz band.

With this camera, and a used Asahi Pentax S-3, I made good money in the early 1970s in Mexico City until we left for Vancouver in 1975. I photographed wealthy Mexican families using Kodak Tri-X and processing the film and printing in my little darkroom in Arboledas, Estado de México. Many years later when I have returned to Mexico City my former clients have shown me my work and I can proudly reveal that they are pristine and not yellow with age.

As soon as we left Mexico, and on our way here, I purchased a couple of better cameras in Los Angeles. The Pentacon-F became a decorative fixture in my oficina.

Every once in a while I would test the shutter. To my shock about 3 months ago the shutter was not operational.

My philosophy is that since I bought these cameras when they worked, they should still work when I leave for my soon to come oblivion.

My friend Gary Cullen (owner of a magical 1947 Tatra) used to have a business called Brighouse Camera Repair. He is now retired. He offered to fix it. What did he do?

Incredibly, he has black shutter cloth, so he cut some and made a new shutter for the camera.

When my Portland friend, Curtis Daily visited me last week (he left yesterday), we decided to shoot some pinhole photographs with my Mamiya RB 67. We also shot portraits with the Pentacon of each other posing with Pancho el Esqueleto using Kodak Ektachrome which is not only being sold in Vancouver but it is processed at The Lab. And of course that new shutter works perfectly.

In my current technique of using my Epson V700 scanner as a tabletop camera, this image satisfies me and I remember fondly how the Pentacon-F, purchased with funds I earned from working for Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. somehow predetermined that someday I would become a photographer.

Boris Riabov - 6 March 2025

The Keynote - 1915 - William Arthur Chase

My grandmother often told me that the devil knew more not because he was the devil but because he was an old man. Because I am 82, I can assert that I know stuff and that some of that stuff is useful.

I started taking photographs in 1958 and I have continued until now. And from now, I am continuing until I meet my oblivion.

It is for that that I can assert that the Holy Grail of photography in the 20^th century was a style that could be readily identified. We could discern the styles of Philippe Halsmann, Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Diane Arbus, Ansel Adams, and many more.

In this 21^st century with magazines and newspapers all but gone the profession of editorial (magazine, newspaper) photograph has all but disappeared.

Ansel Adams’s photos are famous to this day as we know where he took his pictures and we understand the clarity of his zone system that brings out the shadows without blowing out the whites.

Because of the proliferation of phone photographs, we now see lots of nature/garden, sunset photographs. It is very difficult (my opinion) for anybody to identify these photographs to a particular photographer. It was the portrait of that past century, where a sense of style was obvious and lighting was used.

I look at my large collection of photo books and I wonder who will want them when I am gone. At the same time I know why I purchased them and why I read them all.

To have an identifiable style in that 20^thcentury one had to rip off styles of other photographers, and sooner or later the rip-offs had enough variation that they became the property of the photographer. I have looked at photographs, sculptures and paintings and I have used them for inspiration. My photographs might not make the rip-off obvious but it is there. Even poetry such as that of Emily Dickinson and my countryman Jorge Luís Borges that inspires me to take photographs to illustrate one of their poems.

I equate a photographer with a 19th century American gunfighter. A gunfighter’s last shot had to be good or he would be dead. While death is not the result for a photographer who takes a bad photograph,  I would think that a photographer is as good as their last photograph.

Such was the case (a subjective opinion it is) of my photograph last night of the mercurial Boris Riabov who is gainfully employed by Beau Photo.

Boris Riabov - June 6, 2024

Because of the excellent (my opinion) algorithms of Facebook and Twitter and since I rarely comment or discuss politics and religion, my feed is a wonderful and constant show of Vincent van Goghs, and other artist of the pasts to this day. There was one that caught my eye. His name is William Arthur Chase:

 Born:  1878 - Bristol, England

Died:   1944 - Blewbury, England

Known for: Portrait and floral still life painting.

A few weeks before last night, I had been visited by Riabov and his Beau Photo friend Nicole Langdon-Davies. He sat down at my baby grand Chickering piano and played for almost 45 minutes. When a bit later I saw the Chase’s piano painting I was inspired.

For the photograph I used a Fuji X-E3 equipped with a Lensbaby attachement and wide-angle extension. I took 8 photographs and one (in my eyes is perfect).

Today Friday, March 7 I find myself still alive.

An added piece of information important to me is that the music on the Chickering was one of three albums of my great aunt Buenaventura Gálvez Puig who was a concert pianist. The book is open at a Chopin Impromtu.

Senecio Brachyglottis greyii

When one lives alone in a house that was occupied also by someone else, and in this case my Rosemary, I find things every day that remind me of her.

I have had this Polaroid on my desk for some months. It is dark and embedded with dust. Today I decided to scan it and to painfully remove all that dust. The colours are a purplish blue. The Senecio Brachyglottis greyii (the grey plant) was one of her favourite grey plants. She had a fondness for all grey plants. The rose is one of my favourite David Austen English Roses called Rosa ‘Fair Bianca’. It has a unique myrrh scent that only snobbish rosarians like. Both Rosemary and I were rose snobs!

To me there is a lovely sadness in this Polaroid that is almost like looking at Rosemary, who often, on her own, would reflect and show a sadness in her face. Our eldest daughter Alexandra inherited that melancholic face.