Monday, April 03, 2006





In the early 50s, US photographer Bert Stern convinced the folks at Smirnoff Vodka that the driest vodka martini would have to evoke the dryness of a real desert. So Bert Stern went to Egypt and took the famous photo of the martini with the Great Pyramid of Giza as a background. Stern initiated the trend of photographers going around the world with big budgets all in the name of authenticity.


That era and the budgets are long gone but I always have in mind Stern's ability to distill any portrait into an essence. When he was assigned to photograph Gary Cooper in the role of Western hero in the heels of his staring part in High Noon, Stern chose to photograph him in a coat and tie and used the gun as the essence to convey the idea of the Western. In this portrait Stern shows what so few photographers are able to do well and this is the perfect white background. Whenever I take portraits I invariably put myself in Stern's shoes. Here is my take on Morris Panych the director of the Arts Club Theater production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.

Bert Stern

Sunday, April 02, 2006



I do believe that all children, be they little boys or little girls, should have and wear a sailor dress or suit at least once in their life. I was delighted when on a trip to Can Cun in 2002, I found a sailor dress at a Sanborns drug store. In May 2003, when Rebecca was 5, she wore it in our garden and posed for me with Rosa 'Mrs. Oakley Fisher'. In 1966 I wore a real sailor uniform and here it was in my winter blues by the sea lion on the rambla at Mar del Plata in Argentina. I originally left Buenos Aires in 1954 when I was 11 and I have fond memories of going to the movies with my father and mother and particularly with my grandmother, Lolita. She had a liking for "peliculas de con-boy" and she would take me to Lavalle Street which had blocks and blocks of movie houses, one after the other. It was not unusual to see three westerns in a row. I specially remember Colt 45 with Randolph Scott in glorious Technicolor. She had good taste for war movies as she took me to see Battleground with John Hodiak. But my mother and father were the ones that took me to the movies that have lingered in my memory. Beau Geste with Gary Cooper, Robin Hood with Errol Flynn, The Corsican Brothers with Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Scaramouche with Stewart Granger, The Man in the Iron Mask with Louis Hayward and The Scarlet Pimpernel with my mother's favourite actor (after Joseph Cotton) Leslie Howard. I saw them again with my daughters, particularly with Rebecca's mother, Hilary. Hilary and I saw Gunga Din when Hilary was 8. Today Rebecca (8) and I saw Gunga Din . I told Rebecca, after the movie ended, that as a boy all I wanted to see were peliculas de guerra (war), de conboys, de piratas and de espadachines (swordfighting movies). I further told her that I could not speak for the tastes of a little girl since I had never been one. Her reply was, "Papi, as a little girl my tastes aren't that different." Imagine that!

Saturday, April 01, 2006



Any excuse to publish the photograph of a beautiful woman is a good one. But this time around the reason is a sad one. It was only yesterday that I found out that Maria de Lurdes Béjar had died. I don't know more because I was too shocked to ask her ex-husband, globetrotting photographer León Béjar, any more questions. I photographed Lurdes twice: once in my studio and another time in her tub as part of my 1989 show of women in tubs. Lurdes was from Portugal. She was not a inch taller than 5 feet. She was one of the most beautiful women I ever met.

Friday, March 31, 2006




When architect Frank Allen's Terry Fox Memorial, at the foot of Robson and Beatty Street, was inaugurated in 1984, it instantly became Vancouver's most hated structure. Could it be too small to reflect Terry Fox's huge feat? Nearby BC Place Stadium also dwarfs the structure. The monument is now mostly forgotten, even though there are many positive aspects to it. I met and photographed Frank Allen a bit later. He stuck to his guns and stayed in town in spite of the terrible and long media campaign against his memorial. Allen had a tidy little office somewhere on West 14th or 15th Avenue, just West of Granville. In the garden he had one of the fibre glass lions, that was the model for the four that grace each of the memorial's corners. I like to think of them as our city lions There is another lion on the top floor balcony of the Marine Building but that is another story. In the memorial arch walls there are two, 5ft by 18 ft, steel etchings. One is based on the iconic photograph of Terry Fox running and the other is a map of Canada showing his cross country route. I happen to know the artist on whose pontilistic style drawings the etchings are based. He is Ian Bateson. Ian has never believed in participating in fashionable or popular projects that might further his career. He believes in following his heart and his principles. As for the gentle Frank Allen I have no idea where he might be.

I took the memorial photograph here in one shot. I used a Pentax MX with a 15mm rectilinear wide angle lens and Kodak Tri-X. The beautiful Maddalena Di Gregorio placed her hand near my lens and I used a tiny flash. I kept the shutter open for 35 seconds at f-5.6. I processed the film in Perfection Micrograin using the technique called extended range night photography.

Ian

Thursday, March 30, 2006



The suave and handsome 6-foot-2 man in a herringbone jacket and striped tie who opened the door of a room at the Sutton Place Hotel (at the time it was the Meridien) reacted to my stare by stating, "I played centre in my secondary school basketball team." Genoa-born (in 1922) Italian actor Vittorio Gassman faced my camera. I was to wait as he had to create a character. He bent his head and closed his eyes. Ignoring an experienced film critic's warning on asking actors about former spouses, I mentioned Shelly Winters. Gassman's reaction was silence. Gassman, who suffered chronic emphysema, bronchitis, high blood pressure and depression died on June 29th, 2000, of heart failure in Rome. He told his final stage audience in February 2000, "Death does not obsess me - it disgusts me."

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Jennifer Montgomery

These two women, one an American film director, the other a German actress are linked in my photo files by the positive and the negative. I photographed them both in the 90s in the Sun Room of the Hotel Vancouver. Both came for the Vancouver Film Festival. There the similarities end. I was struck by the intensity of Barbara Sukowa who was in town to promote Lars Van Trier's Europa. It was difficult to hold her gaze. Behind the protection of my camera I asked her to look into it and, "seduce me." This she did.

Jennifer Montgomery had been seduced, when she was 14, by Jock Sturges, photography/art teacher, at a private boarding school. Years later the FBI wanted to nail Sturges for child pornography and attempted to coerce and intimidate Montgomery to testify. Montgomery refused even though the FBI went to terrible lengths, even as far as blackmailing her with the threat of publishing the nude photos that Sturges had taken of her. Montgomery prevailed and Sturges was off the hook. But years later, in 1995, Montgomery with her avant-garde film Art for Teachers of Children got even. In the film, the actor who plays Sturges, tells his young model to show more energy (plus more of those banalities that we photographers shower our subjects with). This results in the actress playing Montgomery to take off her shirt. With Montgomery facing my camera I was speechless.

Art for Teachers of Children

Tuesday, March 28, 2006



Vancouver Sun journalist Malcolm Parry calls it the privileged position. If you are looking up at a tall building you are not in that situation. You have to be above and looking down. Another aspect of the privileged position is access. Access to celebrities has become doubly difficult since 9/11. The rock band The Police were the first to establish restrictions on when they could be photographed during a performance and they demanded that photographers sign contracts which prohibited most of the lucrative uses of the photographs. When I took these of the Police my access was incredible but I had to sign a contract that did not allow me to use any of them for T shirts!

I have always loved this photograph of Sarah McLachlan and her husband Ashwin Sood. I took it at Sarah's old house and there were no handlers around. Only the Straight writer, Alex Varty was there. I cannot imagine being able to take a picture like this now.