Wednesday, September 17, 2008



Sursum corda (lift up your hearts) from the Catholic Mass.


As soon as the priest would utter the magic words ite, missa est which in Latin means "go the Mass is over", I was out of the church like a light ready to play with my friends on the street. I knew the ropes and I always managed to arrive late for Mass but I made sure I made it before the Ofertory began. This was considered to be the minimum requirement to satisfying the Catholic dictum of attending Holy Mass every Sunday. I knew all this because I was raised a Catholic. My grandmother said her Holy Rosary at least 10 times per day. And to top it all I was sent to a Catholic boarding high school in Austin, Texas for 4 years.

In my four years there I received the best education of my life. The Brothers of the Holy Cross that taught me, taught me well and from the heart (as Jonathon Young's Father Flynn says in Doubt, below). I have kept correspondence with my last, remaining and living teacher from that school, Brother Edwin Reggio CSC to this day.

It was with that skepticism that comes from having been served well by my Catholic church upbringing that I attended tonight the Arts Club Theatre play Doubt by John Patrick Shanley at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage. Doubt is a very Catholic play set at the St. Nicholas School and Church in the Bronx in 1964.

My fears were all unfounded. I should have known better. To begin with the play was fronted by two of the best actors in the business, Jonathon Young (Father Flynn) and Gabrielle Rose (Sister Aloysius). The other two actors, Sasa Brown (Sister James) and Michèle Lonsdale Smith (Mrs. Muller) were not in the least intimidated by the virtuso competition and did just fine. I was a bit surprised in the beginning to see the previously voluptuous Sasa Brown (as seen in my photograph here) appear in nun's habits!

The play opened with a sermon from the pulpit in which Jonathon Young's Father Flynn somehow made up for all those masses I almost missed. It felt comforting to be back in church again. He was the perfect priest. I am sure Young would make the perfect serial killer, too.

But then I don't think I know the real Jonathon Young at all. The Jonathon Young that has been in my studio a few times has always shown up in his latest role and has always refused to be anybody else. Here you see him as Trout Stanley from last year's terrific play, Trout Stanley for Ruby Slippers. I remember asking Young to lean a bit to his right for my photograph and he answered, "Alex, Trout Stanley would only lean to the left, "and he then did just that.



I had never really seen Gabrielle Rose (top, left) in a role (that makes Iago a rank amateur) where I disliked her until tonight. Don't get me wrong, she was superb. She just simply convinced me to dislike her and when all roles are reversed with the "innocent" Sister James of Sasa Brown and she breaks down in tears I felt all kinds of sympathy for her. It was the same with Young's Father Flynn who goes from complete self-control and self-confidence to almost begging on his knees that I knew that this play will be hard to top this year. The ending is subtle and I was left with an almost comforting sense of doubt. Had I been just a bit daring I might have asked the clerically collared gentleman who was sitting in front of me what he thought of it all.



But then I could be wrong (about the play being hard to top) as I will be attending the last performance of Bard on the Beach's Titus Andronicus directed by Young's wife Kim Collier on Friday. Since all of these fine directors (lncluding Rachel Ditor the director of Doubt whom I once asked exactly what was a dramaturge and she just smiled!) and actors seem to be home grown, it is nice to know that they are all in the family and a fine family it is.

Doubt runs until October 12

Tuesday, September 16, 2008


The Execution of the King - John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord Acton, Lectures on the French Revolution (LF ed.) [1910]

In the above book there is an interesting section of a very famous acquital during the time of the execution of Louis XVI. It is notable that Lord Acton insists in writing it as Lewis XVI!

One acquittal is remembered beyond all the rest. In every school and in every nursery of France the story continues to be told how Sombreuil, the governor of the Invalides, was acquitted by the judges, but would have been butchered by the mob outside if his daughter had not drunk to the nation in a glass filled with the warm blood of the last victim. They were taken home in triumph. Sombreuil perished in the Reign of Terror. His daughter married, and died at Avignon in 1823, at the height of the royalist reaction. The fame of that heroic moment in her life filled the land, and her heart was brought to Paris, to be laid in the consecrated ground where she had worshipped as a child, and it rests under the same gilded canopy that covers the remains of Napoleon. Many people believe that this is one of the legends of royalism which should be strung with the mock pearls of history. No contemporary mentions it, and it does not appear before 1801. Mlle. de Sombreuil obtained a pension from the Convention, but this was not included in the statement of her claims. An Englishman, who witnessed the release of Sombreuil, only relates that father and daughter were carried away swooning from the strain of emotion. I would not dwell on so well-worn an anecdote if I believed that it was false. The difficulty of disbelief is that the son of the heroine wrote a letter affirming it, in which he states that his mother was never afterwards able to touch a glass of red wine. The point to bear in mind is that these atrocious criminals rejoiced as much in a man to save as in a man to kill. They were servants of a cause, acting under authority.





As I walked aroung the garden today and looked at which roses were still going strong, Abraham Darby, St Swithun, Mary Rose, chinenis x odorata, Immortal Juno, Gruss an Aachen, I almost missed a white rose (only one in bloom) by the gate to the back lane. She is a climbing tea rose raised in by M. Robert in France in 1850. She was originally named Mlle. de Sombreuil but the name has been shortened to Sombreuil. She is incredibly white and her profile is almost flat as if someone had shaved off most of her with a very sharp straight razor. I find it amazing that in spite of the blood involved in the origin of her story there is no red anywhere in this pristine and beautiful, sweet smelling rose. I would have never noticed her as she was quiet in her dark corner which is perhaps a reason for her not flowering as freely as some of my other roses.

I cannot explain why but when I was scanning the rose I remembered one of my early heartbreaks. I was 21. Her name was Susy and I had gone to a party in a Buenos Aires suburb. It was was at an English young man's house by the name of Singer. I had purchased two tickets to also go to see a live performance of Astor Piazzolla at the Teatro Florida in downtown Buenos Aires. When the time came to leave the party I told Susy we had to go. She said, "I am having fun. Why don't we stay?" I replied,(What an idiot I was!), "I am not going to change my plans. I am going with you or without you." And that was that and I left. As I waited for the train it was evening. There is nothing more lonely and depressing than waiting for one when one's heart is broken.

I sat down at the smallish and intimate Teatro Florida. I tried not to notice the empty seat to my right. Piazzolla was powerful and electric. I almost forgot my pain until he began to play this slow and sorrowfully beautiful tango called La Milonga del Ángel. Suddenly I felt a slight pressure on my right hand. And in my right ear I heard her whisper, "I changed my mind. I thought you would miss me."

It was in the quiet way that Susy made me notice her that is perhaps why I connected Sombreuil with her today. Soon after that concert (in the middle of a bitterly cold and gray Buenos Aires winter) Susy left me for a violinist (a much older man) at the Teatro Colón orchestra. I returned to Buenos aires in my late 50s. I rang the bell at her house and when she opened the door she said, "Aren't you going to kiss me?

La vida es un tango. "Life is a tango," Mexicans like to say.

I received an email from Susy a few years later and then I found out that she had died of cancer.

Monday, September 15, 2008

My grandmother used to tell me stories about her life in Spain and in the Philippines in the 19th century. One I will never forget is about the virtuoso Spanish violinist and composer Pablo de Sarasate and of his grand snub to a Paris salon lady who invited him to dine 'avec votre violon'. 'Chère Madame,' he replied, 'je viendrai avec plaisir, mais mon violon ne dîne pas.' (I'll come with pleasure but my violin does not dine.) Most of my life as a photographer (I have never told anybody I used to play the alto saxophone) I have been invited to functions and such and I have been asked to bring my camera. In just about every case I have managed to leave my camera home. I hate taking pictures at functions. Some photographers call these "grin and grip". But when paid I have done a few. Most were for Canadian Pacific Limited and I photographed retirements (at the Terminal City Club) of their executives. I hated doing this especially as I found them glorified roasts where the underlings took advantage of making fun of the retiree. I would look at my wife Rosemary with sad eyes, before one of these evenings. She would look back at me and I knew exactly what she was thinking, "We need the money. You go." And I did. There is one function that I did attend. I suspect that the writer who told me to go, Les Wiseman who at the time (1988) was working for Vancouver Magazine, wanted to look at the pictures I was going to take. Even though there was no chance that the magazine was ever going to run them. It was a fashion show in which the models were all strippers and it was held in Systems which was the hottest night club in town at the time. It was on Richards Street. It is still there under another name. I was given the exclusivity of being able to take pictures in the dressing room. There are quite a few of the best of the exotic dancers of the time here. I have self-censored the pictures so as not to offend any young readers.

Sunday, September 14, 2008


It seems that a few days ago when Rosemary called Hilary as to when we were going to get Rebecca and Lauren, Rosemary heard Rebecca say, "I don't want to go. I want to stay here so I can play with my friends." It was inevitable that after having Rebecca with us every weekend for 10 years this had to happen. It just didn't seem that it would have happened so soon.

My grandmother catered to my tastes in sweets because she liked sweets. She and I both seemed to have a similar taste in films: war pictures, westerns and films with dashing swordsmen. If she didn't she never told me. Going out for an afternoon (and sometimes late evenings) with Abue was always a pleasant adventure. We would go in to see a movie and as soon as it was finished we would walk down Lavalle (in the 50s this Buenos Aires street was a Broadway of movie houses) and slip into another one.
Perhaps Abue only had to compete with my toy soldier collection. There was no TV. There were no computer games. I don't recall one moment when she was ever angry at me. She always singled me out as being artistic because I had inherited the talent from her. I felt special. I loved her. Until she died in the early 70s I had a lively grandson/grandmother relationship. But then she was the only grandparent I ever had.


But with Rebecca (on the other side of the equation as I am the grandparent) I cannot fathom what she might be thinking. She also has all her grandparents nearby in Vancouver.

On Saturday I took her to the garden and lay 8 paper napkins in a row. There was wind so I had to put a pebble on each. I explained to Rebecca that each napkin represented a decade. I showed her where she was and where Rosemary was. I showed her the 32 years that represented the years that Rosemary worked for Mariposa before she (and most of the others ) was summarily let go without compensation as Mariposa cited bankruptcy. I told Rebecca that perhaps the most important meaning in her Aby's (as she calls Rosemary) life was her relationship with her grandchildren and especially her. I asked her if it was too much to sacrifice, pointing out the long row of white napkins in front of her, to spend one day of the week with Rosemary. She didn't reply and I have no idea what she thought of my explanation. I could not tell her that I too, felt like Rosemary and my life would have very little meaning without her.

Today Rosemary, Abraham Rogatnick and I went to a salon at the home of Colin (head of the Canadian Music Centre in Vancouver) and Winnie Miles to a preview concert by the Erato Ensemble. Just at about the end, tenor William George sang Ariel Ramirez's Alfonsina y El Mar. This Argentine zamba (similar in some ways to the Brazilian variety but slower, sadder and written with a z) broke my heart with nostalgia. The composer wrote it for the Argentine folk singer Mercedes Sosa. The Alfonsina of the song was an Argentine poet of note, Alfonsina Storni, 1892-1938) who striken with breast cancer, sent her last poem Voy a dormir ("I'm going to sleep") to the Buenos Aires daily La Nación . The following day she committed suicide, by walking into the sea at the La Perla beach in Mar del Plata, Argentina

When we got home I searched for the Mercedes Sosa version on the net and cried. It got worse when I listened to Sosa's take on Chilean Violeta Parra's Gracias a la Vida , Thanks to life. This was the very title I used for a sequence of photographs of Rebecca with her first ballet teacher, Andrea Hodge in 2004.

Alfonsina y el Mar

Saturday, September 13, 2008


In 1959 one of my more sophisticated roomates, Dan Sherrod at St. Edward's High School in Austin Texas was into European sportscars (his father was the Aston Martin dealer in Midland, Texas), and esoteric stuff that was always in good taste. It was Dan who bought a record by a then almost unknown comedian Shelley Berman. The album was called Inside Shelly Berman.

Nobody should go through life without hearing his views on buttermilk (particularly what a glass of the stuff looks like after you have emptied it). Thanks to Shelley Berman I have never tried this particular lactic product.

Luckily Berman never spoke on yogurt or I would have never tried it. But it was not until I was 21 and in the Argentine Navy that I tried it. My secretary Edna Gahan came in one day with a jar of peach yogurt from a then renowned purveyor of milk products called La Vascongada. She was so obviously relishing it and she noticed that I had noticed. She offered me some but I refused telling her that I would never partake of rotten milk. She smiled and insisted. I have loved yogurt since.

At about that time I would be invited for high tea on weekends to my Uncle Freddy and Aunt Iris's. I never missed these even though I had to share the table with my boring first cousin (about my age) John Hayward. Aunt Iris made the best deviled ham on earth. I could stomach John's comments on his love of opera and in particular Wagner's operas as long as I had that deviled ham on the side.

By 1991 I had found that opera was not only not boring but fantastic. But I drew the line with Wagner. Then the Georgia Straight assigned me to photograph baritone Tom Fox who had come to town to sing Wagner's The Flying Dutchman.



I called up my friend James Delgado (right) who was then the Director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum. He told me he had a ship's wheel. I now had to find some sort of sunset backdrop for my concept shot of the Flying Dutchman. I went to Flashpoint and asked owner Berndt if he had such a thing. He looked at me and as if everybody asked for these particular backdrops every day he answered, "Do you want it with cumulus or stratus clouds?" I managed to stick the huge canvas roll in my wife's Audi 5000 (it was a big car) and took it to the Maritime Museum. Tom Fox looked the part and I was charmed.

Doug Tuck, then publicist for Vancouver Opera was so happy with my pictures that he offered to trade some for good tickets. Rosemary and I went with a bit of trepidation. We loved the Flying Dutchman.



Cousin John Hayward died in Toronto a few years after we saw that opera. I had a chance to visit him in Toronto. I found that he was urbane, interesting and certainly not boring. We had a lovely time together. John sent me a letter shortly after telling me how pleased he was that we had finally hit it off. My only regret is that I should have given him and that peach yogurt an earlier try. I would have been a better person for it.

Cousin John should I try buttermilk?

Friday, September 12, 2008


Last night, while preparing my projected lecture (I talk and project jpgs from a CD through a lap top connected to a digital projector) I found a devastatingly disturbing portrait of great American photographer Margaret Bourke-White. The portrait was taken by Life Magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898 - 1995) in March 1959. Bourke-White who had taken the first cover for Life Magazine in September 1936 and flown in bombing mission (the first woman) in January 23, 1943 over Tunis she was previously and dashingly photographed by Eisenstaedt. The difference between the pictures made me think on not only how Bourke-White's career ended quite suddenly around 1953 when she learned she had Parkinson's but also how many of my friends (6) here in Vancouver have that terrible disease. I also know that Edward Weston, ultimately stopped taking photographs because of the crippling disease.

A couple of years back I had a student, Alan Jacques in my class at Focal Point. He had Parkinson's and he told me once, "I have my good days and my bad days. And today is a good one." This cheerful and talented photographer had mastered a special technique. He used wide angle lenses (they tend to minimize shake) and he opted for Nikon FM or FM-2s. He held these cameras firmly on his forhead and would use a wide stance with his legs and get close to his subjects. He shot beautiuful nudes in my nude photography class. A few months back I ran into Jacques whose photography business is going strong. I would suspect that this is one instance where digital photography has become a distinct asset.



I have heard of various photographers in the past who have been so in spite of being clinically blind. It seems to me that Parkinson's must then be the cruelest of all diseases to hit a photographer. Every morning when I wake up (more and more I do this) I check my hands.

In 1978 I took still photographs for the Vancouver CBC. One of my jobs was to photograph drama. The particular drama that took me to studio 40 one day was a show called Leo and Me. It featured Brent Carver (Leo) and a young boy (the me of Leo and Me) called Michael J. Fox. Years after I would go into my files and look at Leo and Me and go to throw them away. And then for who knows what reason I kept them. Here is one of the very young Michael J. Fox. He was a cheerful kind of kid and everybody on the set loved him. How were we to know?



In 2002, an investigation was launched into Leo and Me after an unusual cluster of Parkinson's disease cases was noted among former cast and crew members of the show. Fox and director Don Williams were among the four with the disease, along with a writer and a cameraman

Thursday, September 11, 2008


Guest Blog by John Lekich

The story below is a story that needs the personal experience, wit and style of John Lekich. So I cede today's blog to him. Lekich has previously written two other guest blogs here and here.


Perhaps you think that punk rockers have no heart – that they are simply serial-puking cynics with safety pins stuck in all the wrong places. Thanks to a consummate gentleman known as Randy Rampage, I know better. His generous role in my sputtering love life all came back to me when Alex innocently asked: “Who was in Randy’s Cadillac with you anyway?”

I should explain that, many years ago, I had a fierce crush on a gorgeous blonde who has since attained an august reputation in local journalism circles. (For reasons of discretion, she will henceforth be referred to as Betty Bombshell.) My well-known adoration earned me little more than pitying looks from my fellow freelancers and the occasional medicinal glass of scotch from a sympathetic editor. All this changed when I made the acquaintance of Mr. Rampage who encouraged me to confront Betty with my feelings. When I explained that I was clearly out of Betty’s league, Randy related his own story about a seemingly unattainable blonde. “I worked up enough courage to ask her if she liked red wine,” he said. The gleam in his eye told the rest of the story, which he finished off with: “You just never know.”

I thought nothing more about it until – thanks to Alex’s vast social network - I found myself sharing a table at The Railway Club with Rampage, his fellow musician Zippy Pinhead, and none other than Betty herself. I recall stammering quite a bit. Mr. Rampage grasped the situation and – toward the end of lunch - asked Betty and me if we’d ever ridden in the backseat of a Cadillac. When we both responded negatively, he said: “Well, you’re going to now.” I recall that Mr. Pinhead also wanted to sit in the backseat, which had more space than my living room couch. Nevertheless, Mr. Rampage continually repeated that there was no room. When Zippy persisted, Randy barked: “You’re sitting in front!”

While I was unable to conquer my shyness, my proximity to the lovely Betty made for a cherished memory. After all these years, I continue to regard Mr. Rampage as alternative music’s answer to Miss Lonely Hearts. And – when I finally took his advice to become a little bolder with women - I discovered he was right. You just never know.