Tuesday, July 03, 2007

When I first met Ona Grauer who was working behind the bar at Uphoria I knew I had to find a way of taking her photographs. Luckily I wasn't a plumber and I didn't have to lure her to watch me fix a sink. I could simply say, "Two photographers, Ian McGuffie, Patrice Bilawka and I are working on a project. Would you like to be part of it?" She quickly replied, "Yes."




She came to my garden and I took a photograph of the four of us. I warned her that if at any moment, during our individual sessions with her, we were to ask her to undrape she was not to object. She told us that she had no problem.

The idea was that the four of us would not be together again until our one evening show at my studio a month later. We were to be abslutely secretive on how we were going to photograph her and she was not to hint to any of us how she was being photographed.

I had a session with her in my studio. The first picture you see here is from it. After that I decided on using Joe Cohen's collection of armour and broad swords.



I had no idea on how to combine the sword with my wish to photograph Ona in my garden. The day of one of subsequent many shoots in my garden she would parade without clothes and I kept telling her that even though the garden was sunken in relation to the street, pedestrians just might see her. Her comment was, "I am naked. So what?"



In my 30 years plus in Vancouver I have photographed many undraped beautiful women. In most cases Rosemary accepted it all with a resignation that I have come to admire and respect in her. But in the case of Ona, Rosemary developed a keen affection for her and understood what I was trying to achieve (even if I didn't).

With Ona I learned my paces on figure photography. Ona was always patient and faced my camera with an almost unsettling equanimity. Sometimes I thought she was the Sphinx. She always smiled and her good mood was constant. Just out of curiousity I asked her if she ever threw dishes at her boyfriend. She answered, "And why would I want to do that?"



A lot has been written of late about intelligent design versus Darwin's evolutionary theory. I would like to offer here a third option which I would call beautiful design.

Monday, July 02, 2007


Sometime in the early 80s freelance writer (now a respected author and sports broadcast journalist)Alison Griffiths joined a Vancouver all-female rugby team and proposed to Vancouver Magazine editor, Malcolm Parry a story on her experience. I was dispatched to shoot the team playing on various Saturday afternoons, including many rainy ones.





I had never had an opportunity to photograph a rugby game in spite of the fact that my O'Reilly nephews in Argentina were all rugby players (amateurs as the rugby leagues in Argentina are supposed to be so). In fact my nephew Georgito had even been a member of the Zebras.



This was a euphemistic name given to the Argentine National Rugby Team which normally were called the Pumas. Since the Pumas and Georgito played the Springboks in South Africa during the sports embargo, the Zebras played but everybody really knew they were the Pumas!



So I knew about rugby as I had attended many games in Buenos Aires during the mid 60s to watch my nephew play with the extremely snobbish CASI (Club Atlético San Isidro). It was here that I discovered the tercer tiempo (or the rugby third half).



Winning team and losing team would meet after the game and booze it up. I discovered that the ladies of the Vancouver rugby league honoured this excellent tradition. They even went as far as telling extremely off-color jokes during the drinking. I took pictures in the dressing room and I noticed that alcohol flowed freely. I voluntarily left the dressing room as I realized they were not going to tell me to leave.

By the time I finished shooting, after that month of following the team around, I thought I was almost good enough to shoot rugby.



I had almost gotten the hang of it. Alas the pictures never saw the light of day. Allison was hurt in one of the games (see picture) and when she went to the doctor she was told that she and her husband David Cruise were going to have a baby. And that was the end of the story.

Sunday, July 01, 2007


For any reader here who has had enough of my roses today's blog is on a flower that is not part of the Family Rosaceae but the Family Apiaceae. The flower is from the Genus Astrantia.

Of late I have been thinking about my older daughter (38) Alexandra Elizabeth. She is now four hours away by the not very good highway to Lillooet. This distance has made me think of her objectively. Ale has never suffered fools. But she has always moderated it with a tolerance that I find astounding. I would also say that gullibility is not one Ale's deffects.

This story really began some 34 years ago when we were living in Arboledas, Estado de México ( a suburb north of Mexico City). We owned a Volkswagen beetle and we had it serviced at the dealer (closer to the city on the freeway that Mexicans call El Periférico ). When this happened I would have to take the bus from our house. This bus was a legendary bus of sorts as its route took it past every hospital and military barrack of the city and its environs. It had an identifying blue stripe (for those who could not read) and it was called Circuito Hospitales, Cuarteles, Tlanepantla y Anexas.



One particular summer day, with Ale in tow we rode the bus to pick up our car. The stench of unwashed bodies in a hot summer day in the stuffy bus was almost unbearable.

My wife Rosemay seldom goes into rhapsodies about her individual plants. She makes no comment when I manage to pursuade her to come and gaze on some rose that I cite for being perfect. Curiously it was only a week ago where she pointed at one of her many Astrantia major subsp. involucrata 'Shaggy' and blew me away with a most uncharacterstic statement of fact, "This is a perfect flower." She has several astrantias including Astrantia major and maxima but the cool white and green variety Shaggy is by far her favourite.

It was five or six years ago that I cut some of her astrantias and put them into a vase to decorate our dining room for dinner. I noticed this unpleasant smell that took me back all those years to the Circuito Hospitales bus with the blue stripe. When Ale arrived later that day I pointed her to one of Rosemary's astrantias in the garden and I asked her to give me her opinion.



Since Ale has the same fondness for the same plants that Rosemary likes she nodded her approval. I asked her to smell them. "It's called the Mexican Armpit Plant, " I told her. A few days later Ale called me to tell me that she had gone to a local nursery in search of the plant in question and nobody there had ever heard of the plant!

Astrantias grow in our garden in the shade, in the sun and have a long flowering time. They don't have enemies and don't need much care. I tolerate their stench and remember fondly all those Mexico City buses that had names and coloured stripes. They had personality just like Rosemary'a astrantias. The stripes and the names of those buses were eliminated years ago and replaced with impersonal numbers. But Circuito Hospitales, Cuarteles Tlanepantla y Anexas lives on in our garden.

Saturday, June 30, 2007


My daughter Ale called us this morning at 9. Last night she drove to her new home in Lillooet and arrived at 4 this morning. We spent the afternoon helping her move stuff into her friend Dave's truck and Rosemary, and I cleaned her kitchen, bathroom, etc. During this whole ordeal (and an ordeal it was) I kept thinking of Ale not being near us for the first time in 38 years. Rebecca and Lauren worship her and listen to her gentle admonitions on their behaviour.

We will miss her even though Ale was always very Mexican in her relationship with time. It drives Rosemary crazy that to this day Ale will show up at our door step, spur of the moment, without calling. Ale also retains not only her Mexico City accent but also all the slang words of being a chilanga (Mexico City born).

On the other hand Hilary, who was also born in Mexico City retains a connection with her father's birth in Argentina. She inherited that illogical attraction to soccer that seems to be in our blood. She has always been crazy about Argentina and its performances in the FIFA World Cup. If she didn't have to work today she would be glued as I will to the Under 20 FIFA World Cup on CBC TV when Argentina plays Czechoslovakia.

When Ale called she told us her old place still had some things to pick up and that the fridge had to be cleaned. I went with Rosemary and removed hooks from the wall and emptied the refrigerator. The detritus of someone who has left a house after years of living in it has the power to depress deeply. And this power is double when it affects the ex-tenant's father. I determined then that I was not going to clean the fridge. Rosemary looked at me and said, "I thought your were going to do it." "No, I am going home right now."

All the time I had in mind the idea rustling up the only image in my files related to futbol (soccer). It is my photograph of the handsome, and quiet spoken Carl Valentine who came so many years ago to play for the Whitecaps. I had been assigned in the mid 80s to photograph him for Equity. I also had in mind of sitting in front of my TV to watch the Brazilians play Poland.

I am sure there are many more fridges for me to clean (and Rosemary will do fine without me this time). The depression is beginning to lift and who knows, perhaps Rebecca will inherit something of her mother and she just might want to sit next to me when I watch Argentina this afternoon.

Friday, June 29, 2007

In November 1997 Globe & Mail writer Chris Dafoe and I spent some time in actor Lance Henriksen's movie trailer. He was in town filming a TV series called Millenium. When we left, after the end of the interview and the photo session, Dafoe commented to me, "What a likeable guy." I could not disagree as I, too, was astounded by Henriksen's hospitality and gentlemanly demeanor. The November piece in the Globe by Dafoe had the charming title you see above for this blog. And it was accompanied by a photo of mine where Henriksen smiled.






Thinking back on that day and from my perspective of 2007 I realize it all started sometime in 1985 when Vancouver Magazine associate editor Don Stanley told me to photograph a science fiction writer called William Gibson.



It seems that his 1984 novel Neuromancer had won a science fiction hat trick. It had won the Hugo, the Nebula and the Philip K Dick awards for best novel of that year. I immediately looked for some high technology looking place to photograph the author. I picked Gibson at his Kitsilano home. Getting into my Fiat X-19 presented a problem.My tiny two seater sports car was not able to accomodate his 6ft 5in frame. Gibson ended up with his knees bent to his chin. I took the photo you see here at a new nightclub called Systems that was at the foot of Richards Street. At the time I believed that when one lacked a good photographic idea one resorted (and I did here) to the Dutch Tilt.



Gibson liked his photograph and for many years I was his official photographer. I received calls from Stern, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, etc for pictures. But his influence over me (it certainly helped my finances) went beyond. It was from Gibson that I learned to appreciate Raymond Chandler. I remember fondly going to see Terry Gilliam's Brazil with Gibson and John Lekich at the Park on Cambie Street. We discussed the film over coffee across the street.

But it was also Gibson who first told me of American director Kathryn Bigelow and her 1987 vampire western, Near Dark. It was in this scary but wonderful film that I discovered Lance Henriksen.



While this favourite film of mine is one I have only seen once, I do believe I will see it again soon. I will enjoy Henriksen being very good at being very bad.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

The Maiden:
Pass by! Oh, pass by!
Go away, fierce man of bone!
I am still young, go my dear!
And do not touch me.

Death:
Give me your hand, you beautiful and delicate form!
I am a friend, and am not come to punish.
Be of good cheer! I am not savage,
You will sleep softly in my arms!

Death and the Maiden - Franz Schubert


I don't dare buy Reginald Hill's latest The Death of Dalziel (with a far more interesting title in the UK of Death Comes for the Fat Man - Death of Dalziel). I have read all of Hill's Dalziel (pronounced deal) and Pascoe novels and all of his stand alone novels, too (over 25 in all). But I just don't have the nerve to read this one yet to find out as I did with Colin Dexter's The Remorseful Day of the death of the novel's protagonist, Inspector Morse at the end of it.

Only today I made the connection between my sickly Rosa 'Maiden's Blush' and Franz Schubert's String Quartet No 14 (Death and the Maiden) or Schubert's 1817 lied song Der Tod und das Mädchen from which the second movement of that string quartet is based on. When I hear the quartet or the song I brood but I feel nicely depressed. I feel the same when I listen to Miles Davis playing All Blues with that obsessive Paul Chambers bass vamp.

Eight or so years ago I had the last of my terrible weekly migraines. With age I might have outgrown them. I noticed in those last years that I had few migraines in June and July. I quickly found the reason. In June and July I deadhead my roses and fuss over them and smell them. This is so relaxing that whatever stress I had in my system was dissipated by the roses.

One of my favourite Dalziel & Pascoe police procedurals set in Mid Yorkshire is called Deadheads. In this 1983 novel the scene opens with an old woman deadheading roses. She is suddenly aspproached by a young boy. He shows some curiousity so she explains to the young boy, her niece's bastard son, what she is doing:

'Why do you do it?' demanded Patrick.

'Because,'she lectured, 'once the the flowers have bloomed and begun to die, they inhibit - that is to say , they stop - other young flowers from developing and blooming. Also the petals fall and make the bush and the flower-beds look very untidy. So we cut off the blooms. It's called deadheading.'

By the end of that chapter Patrick is being instructed by his great aunt on the art of deadheading. He has posession of the extremely sharp knife.

'Patrick,'she said taking a step back. 'Patrick!'

There was a sting on her bare forearm as the thorns of the richly scented bush dug into her flesh. And then further up, along the upper arm and in the armpit, there was a series of sharper, more violent stings which had nothing to do with the barbs of mere roses.

Mrs Aldermann shrieked once, sent a skinny parchment-skinned hand to her shrunken breast and fell backwards into the rose-bed. Petals showered down on her from the shaken bushes.

Patrick watched, expressionless, till all was still.
Then he let the knife fall beside the old woman and set off running up to the house, shouting for his mother.

This delightful book features chapter titles that are the names of real roses with short descriptions which somehow reveal the action of the chapter. Since Patrick's mother is called Penelope one of the chapters is appropriately called Penelope, a hybrid musk rose. But the ones that made me laugh are Dandy Dick (the first chapter): Floribunda. Clear pink, erect carriage, almost a Hybrid Tea. And the last chapter, when all the loose ends are resolved, is called Félicité Et Perpétue.

All the above has a connecting purpose. I have two favourite roses, Rosa 'Maiden's Blush (also called Cuisse de Nymphe Emu, Incarnata, La Virginale, La Séduisante) and Rosa 'Reine des Violettes'. Both have a fungus disease called Botrytis cinerea. After struggling for five years to check the disease I have come to the conclusion that these two roses in our wet spring weather are pre-disposed to Botrytis and I must uproot them and throw them away. Even today (check the picture above) amongst all the yellowing and aborted buds, both roses produced a few beautiful and fragrant blooms. I have another Maiden's Blush in a different section of the garden that is fine so I don't feel as terrible a pang about doing in my maiden. I recently purchased a clean Reine des Violettes and she will replace my sick one. I am saddened. If you consider all the other names Maiden's Blush has you have to realize that she does seduce.

But at least when I am deadheading my roses with my secateurs I need not watch my back.

More secateurs

Wednesday, June 27, 2007



I believe I am beginning to understand that children now are different from children then (my time). While I was thrilled at Gene Kelly's swordfighting skills and mesmerized by the beautiful but evil Lana Turner as Milady in The Three Musketeers Rebecca did not understand what was going on and soon got bored. We switched off the TV. Yet a couple of years back we had enjoyed Gunga Din. I have postponed indefinitely what I think should be a child's passage into early adulthood. This would be the watching of Gary Cooper in Beau Geste. Would I be able to take in stride my disappointment if Rebecca would be bored by it? I saw Beau Geste for the first time at the General Paz in Buenos Aires with my father and mother. I was 8 or 9. Could it be possible that she would not be thrilled by the burning of the toy ship in the Geste garden pond?

Yet three years ago Rebecca, Rosemary and I sat a block away from the General Paz in on Cabildo Street. We were eating on a sidewalk table the marvelous pizza at Burgio. It was a very hot Buenos Aires evening. It was 11:30pm. Rebecca asked me what I was sipping. I was sipping moscato which is a very sweet (it tastes of pure grape juice) wine that is served ice cold. Argentines of back then still indulge in this unlikely combination of sweet wine with pizza. Moscato, 14% alcohol (you would never know) is uncommonly good. Rebecca asked me if she could have some. I passed her the glass and she had a couple of sips which she said she enjoyed. Perhaps my right of passage through Beau Geste with my father and mother somehow has the parallel with Rebecca sipping her moscato at 11pm in a hot Buenos Aires evening.

As a child my grandmother (below, right) often told me of equally hot evenings in turn-of-the-20th century Manila. She told me of the old Spanish quarter called Intramuros (within the walls) and how people dressed and flirted with their Spanish fans.



She told me of going to little establishments to sip on ice cold horchata. This is a Spanish non alcholic beverage made from sugar, coconut, rice water and almonds. The beverage was accompanied by ensaimadas which were pastry (very soft and spongy) that was made by twisting the batter (left to rise often) in a nautilus swirl. I enjoy a close approximation of horchata by buying the Italian version called horzata. I buy the syrup in Italian stores. At Goldilocks, on Fur and Broadway, I get the ensaimadas (spelled enzaimadas by the establishment's Filipinos). All I lack to go back to that turn-of-the-century and heavily Spanish influenced Manila is to read one of my favourite books. This is The Blue Afternoon. That the book would be written by a Ghana born Englishman, William Boyd is sort of strange. My Rebecca would not understand that this child (then) would instantly equate William Boyd with Hopalong Cassidy. Luckily I discovered this writer some years ago and I am a reader of his novels. I can tell you that Boyd coined the word zemblanity which is the opposite of serendipity. Boyd defines it as, "The opposite of serendipity, the faculty of making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries by design."

The Manila book by Boyd is a time machine into my grandmother's past. I can easily cite it as one of my ten favourite books from my collection. It involves an architect, a surgeon and a some early fliers who may have preceded the Wright Brothers. Reading about Manila at the turn of that century is like listening to my grandmother talk in her Castilian accent. But it is the killer prologue that kills me every time I read it.

Last week on Saturday afternoon I asked Rebecca to turn of the TV and we sat in the living room while I read to her:

The Blue Afternoon
William Boyd
Prologue


I remember that afternoon, not long into our travels, sitting on deck in the mild mid-Atlantic sun on a slightly smirched and foggy day, the sky pale washed-out blue above the smokestacks, when I asked my father what it felt like to pick up a knife and make an incision into living human flesh. He thought seriously for a while before replying.
 
'It depends on where you cut,'he said.' Sometimes it's like a knife through clay or modelling wax. Some days it's like cutting into a cold blancmange or... or cold raw chicken.'
He pondered pondered a while longer and then reached inside his coat pocket and drew out a scalpel. He removed the small sleeve that protected the blade and offered the slim knife to me.
'Take this. See for yourself.'
I took the scalpel from him, small as a pen but much heavier than I had imagined. He looked down at the remains of our lunch on the table: an edge of cheese with a thick yellow ridn, a bowl of fruit, four apples and a green melon, some bread rolls.'
'Close your eyes, 'he said. 'I'll get something for you, an exact simulacrum.'
I closed my eyes and gripped the scalpel firmly between my thumb and first two fingers. I felt his hand on mine, the gentle pressure on his dry rough fingers, and then he lifted my hand up and I felt him guiding it forward until the poised blade came to rest on a surface, firm, but somehow yielding.
'Make a cut,'he said. 'A small cut. Press down.'
I pressed. Whatever I cut into yielded easily and I moved the blade down an inch or so, or so it seemed, smoothly, with no fuss.
'Keep your eyes closed....What did it feel like?'
I thought for a second or two before replying. I wanted this to be right, to be exact, to be scientific.
'It felt like....Like cold butter, you know, from an icebox. Or a sirloin, like cutting through a tender sirloin.'
 
'See?'he said. 'There's nothing mysterious, nothing to be alarmed about.'
 
I opened my eyes and saw his square face, smiling at me, almost in triumph, as if he had been vindicated in some argument. He was holding out his bare left forearm, the sleeve of his coat and shirt pushed back to the crook of his elbow. On a bulge of muscle, six inches above his wrist, a thin two-inch gash oozed bright blisters of blood.
 
'There, 'he said. 'It's easy. A beautiful incision. Not a waver, with even pressure and with your eyes closed, too.'
 
The expression on his face changed at this moment, to a form of sadness mingled with pride.
'You know,'he said, 'you would have made a great surgeon.'

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Only later in the book did I find out (with a shock) that the above scene is between a father and daughter.