Tuesday, September 19, 2006



I took Rebecca to her piano lesson with Nikolai Maloff yesterday afternoon. It was a tough class and Rebecca insisted that the piece she had to play was evil. She repeated this several times so that finally Nikolai (a very gentle man except when he attempts to demolish his piano during Beethoven piano concerto recitals) took her aside and told her, "This piece is not evil. Ask your parents the meaning of this word. Don't use it to describe our piano music."

I distinctly remember one time when I was around 6, when my mother was combing me that she said, "Alex, with your hair the way it is you look like Hitler." "Who's Hitler?" I asked. "He was a very bad man," she replied.

Outside I explained as best as I could that all humans have the capacity for being good or for being evil. I told her that most times our good side is in charge. I mentioned Hitler. "He was a bad man, wasn't he?" she asked me. "No," I replied, "He was a lot worse. He was evil." I proceeded to explain Auschwitz, the showers and zyklon B. When we arrived at her house she asked, "Did water come out of those showers?" I replied, "No." We didn't say anything more.

A couple of years ago I photographed Vancouver playwright Jonathan Teague (above). He had written a play featuring Hitler's SS. I remember telling Teague about the hair over my forehead when I was a little boy.

Monday, September 18, 2006



When Equity's de facto editor Mike Campbell called me up to ask me to photograph Angus Reid sometime in the early 90s I did not believe him. How could I photograph a poll company? I had never seen a photograph of this man that Campbell said existed. At the time Angus Reid was very careful to stay out of the news so that his company could do its job.

Mike Campbell and I showed up at Reid's West Vancouver home and I found two ways of taking pictures of the man who wasn't who suddenly was. I photographed him cooking in the kitchen and being licked by his dog. Both photographs had to be proof of Reid's existence. I remember that Campbell's conservatively loaded questions during the interview frustrated the liberal leaning Reid. Reid put an end to it by telling Campbell that he was not going to tell Campbell what Campbell wanted him (Reid) to tell him!

Recently I have seen many pictures of Angus Reid and I fondly recall that I was one of the first to photograph the man who never was.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

  Perhaps 9 is some sort of rite of passage as I shared one yesterday with Rebecca. I took her to Jean Grand-Maitre's Romeo and Juliet ballet performed by the Alberta Ballet & The Banff Centre at the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts. As I found myself explaining to Rebecca how Romeo had missed his cue about the fact that Juliet was not really dead and only seemed so, I remembered. I remember my mother taking me to see George Cukor's Romeo and Juliet with Leslie Howard (my mother's idol) and Norma Shearer when I was 9. She too had explained the intricacies of Shakespeare's plot. Around 1994 I saw the perfect Romeo and Juliet, one day after a not so perfect one. I had gone to watch Evelyn Hart and her Royal Winnipeg Ballet at the Queen Elizabeth only to find out that since Evelyn Hart's partner was down with the flu she was not dancing either. I stormed out of the theatre and demanded my money back. My demand was rejected and when I was a couple of blocks away I remembered, "Alex, the music. It's live and it is Sergei Prokofiev." 

I returned to a thoroughly entertaining performance without Evelyn Hart. A publicist called me in the evening and offered me a ticket to next day's performance where she all but guaranteed that Hart would perform. And of course it was perfect. I loved Jean Grand-Maitre's version of the classic. I loved all the magnificent sword fights and I specially liked Mercutio's taunting of Tybalt with a funny homosexual overtone. 

Juliet was no Evelyn Hart but she was very young, very blond, very beautiful and very believable as a young girl that Romeo would fall for. Her dancing was exquisite. When things got more complicated this Juliet, Leigh Allardyce, grew up convincingly. Jonathan Renna (who told us he had butterflies since it was his first Vancouver performance) was perfect for Romeo. Rebecca fell for him, so that was enough for me. And of course there was that live Prokofiev by the Vancouver Symphony. We finished our day with a whipping cream and strawberries crepe at a Robson Street creperie with Sandrine Cassini (one of her multiple parts in the performance was that of a harlot and I had a bit of problem explaining that to Rebecca). 

 

With us were two other Alberta Ballet dancers. I enjoyed listening to Rebecca chat with Sandrine. Rebecca told her about her new jazz dance teacher, Ballet BC's Edmund Kilpatrick (seen here with Sandrine in her Carmen role). But as we walked on Robson on our way home, the best was yet to come. "Papi," Rebecca said, "You were the only one at the table who wasn't a dancer."

Saturday, September 16, 2006


On June 18, 1999 I drove to Abbotsford to photograph W.P. Kinsella for Saturday Night. In previous shoots Kinsella had been really nasty to me so I didn't look forward to it. But this time around he was courteous and pleasant and gave me lots of time to take colour and b+w photographs. The magazine ended up using the less interesting colour ones. I like this one where he is playing Scrabble. Kinsella was also watching a baseball game so I tried to get his attention every once in a while as I did here. I asked him if the game was interesting. He answered, "This is a game of no consequence between the Montreal Expos and the New York Yankees." I turned around to watch and perhaps two minutes later New York pitcher, David Cone pitched his last of 88 pitches, a pop up by Orlando Cabrera. New York won 6-0.

It was a perfect game.

Don Larsen, who pitched a perfect game in 1956 was in attendance.

Friday, September 15, 2006


For many years I have thought of female ballet and modern dancers much in the same way as most other people do. They are are supposed to be slim, tall (or look tall) with slightly remote expressions that would suggest that at any given time they are channeling a white swan. This vision is difficult to sustain when one sees the voluptuous Cori Caulfield, the incredibly tall and muscular Emily Molnar and for those who thought that ballerinas never had cleavage, I still miss (as does Christopher Dafoe, the former Globe & Mail arts critic, turned lawyer) Ballet BC’s Gail Skrela.

I first noticed this revolution (a strong and compact one) when I saw Amber Funk for the first time. Funk even accentuated her short, muscular legs by dancing with work boots. With a smile on my face I watched Max Wyman’s puzzled look during a performance. He did not know what to make of this kind of dancer and of her dancing. I am positive that Funk has turned on many a young person to dance as many of the new breed of compact dancers have. A second compact dancer of note is Jennifer Clarke. In a shoot in my studio with Christopher Gaze she did not think twice about picking him up for the photo.

One compact dancer I did not get enough of is Sandrine Cassini (the perfect Ballet BC Carmen) who left town for Mannheim, Germany a couple of years ago. Fortunately I will see her on Saturday with my granddaughter Rebecca. She is in town dancing in the Alberta Ballet production of Romeo and Juliet.

There are two others that I first discovered a few years ago at Arts Umbrella where my Rebecca is on her third year of the dance program. Lina Fitzner is a gorgeous red-haired woman who is all curves. She taught my Rebecca when her other teacher, Andrea Hodge would go on a Ballet BC tour. I have seen her dance with Mascall Dance, with Amber Funk and in her own choreographed works. The other Arts Umbrella dancer I first saw four years ago at a year-end presentation of the school's dance program. She was a girl with sleepy eyes that smiled all the time.

It has been my pleasure to photograph Karissa Barry twice (once with Lina Fitzner and Amber Funk, Fitzner is top right and Funk bottom right) and most recently for this week's Georgia Straight cover with Farley Johansson. I told her (consider that it was a hot day and she was posing in a tiny bikini with Farley Johansson) that in the last century I would have seen her in a beach movie. She is that kind of girl- one you would have wanted to ask to the prom.

But when she dances, that’s another story.

Karissa Barry

Thursday, September 14, 2006


In mid November when I partially prune my roses and in March when I really go at them I hum along Nick Lowe's Cruel To Be Kind. It was in the late 70s, when Nick Lowe came to Vancouver with his band Rockpile, that I first saw him perform and I enjoyed his songs. I instantly liked Cruel To Be Kind even though I tried to ignore the lyrics which sounded a lot like S&M.

You've gotta be
Cruel to be kind in the right measure,
Cruel to be kind it's a very good sign,
Cruel to be kind means that I love you,
Baby, you've gotta be cruel to be kind...

But now I know that the song is the perfect song to prune roses by. In the past I have been reluctant to be as coldly vicious as Brad Jalbert (from Select Roses in Langley) taught me to be when pruning roses. And, every time, the roses did not perform as well. I learned my lesson and my roses have performed well after heavy pruning.

I am tempted to fertilize my roses in mid September. One thinks that after the wonderful display they gave me this year I should reward them with some food. But this is not so. If I fertilize them now they will grow and as soon as the early frosts hit Vancouver the new and tender growth will not be hardy and it will wither. Such kindness could even kill them. Nick Lowe is right.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006




I have never understood hockey. Imagine me in Mexico City or Buenos Aires explaining the game.

You see, in this game if you hit someone hard with the hockey stick after pushing him into the boards they tell you, "You have been a nasty boy and you will not be allowed to play for 4 minutes." Then during the exciting moments of the game they have someone on a Hammond organ playing the Mexican Hat Dance.

In my first years in Vancouver, 30 years ago, I found myself watching the Montreal Canadiens while not understanding what the heck habitants meant. But somehow I could connect with Guy Lafleur's windswept long hair and I could almost imagine him as an Argentine centro delantero in a final between Boca and River Plate. It was my Hungarian/Canadian friend Paul Leisz, who took me to a game when I suddenly appreciated the game, in spite of that Hammond organ. The sounds of the game, the noise of the puck and the hits with the sticks were lost on TV. But what finally convinced me that this was a wonderful game was when Hockey Night In Canada and CBC cameraman supreme, Mike Varga took me into the CBC trailer outside the Coliseum to watch the director direct his cameramen on a huge multiple screen wall. That job has to be as exciting and stressful as that of a flight controller's.

In May 2002 I was called by Surrey's The Hockey Shop owner Rod Bolivar for a project dear to his heart. It seems that four brothers Lynch had been buying equipment at his shop for years and he felt he owed them something in return for their patronage. By some quirk of events all 4 brother were going to play professionally that year and 3 or 4 of them were going to play in a game together. Mr. Bolivar wanted me to take individual portraits of them and a group photo (above). I was immediately charmed by these handsome brothers who helped each other in the session. For the individual shots we played the game of showing a hockey stick, but not obviously, as seen here with the oldest brother Doug.

I was paid well but somehow the pleasure of the moment has remained in my memory long after I spent the money.