Sunday, July 12, 2009


While deadheading roses today I watched my neighbours come in through the lane in their air-conditioned cars, hermetically sealed to the odors that might linger from nearby garbage bins and perhaps even afraid of breathing the air. The doors of the garage open and they drive in. There is a satisfying thud (for them I suppose) when the door slides down. Some of my neighbours’ houses are kept new and I sometime think that they could hose the interiors without affecting any of their furniture. It is all protected from the elements and even from the travails of time and oxidation. Life is clean and pure, hermetic, sanitized and safe.

I wonder what my neighbours would think of the other Vancouver that is past the lane. It is a Vancouver I have had few glimpses of in my years of working for a city magazine. I have known cops and hoods, pimps and prostitutes, murderers and rapists, coroners and judges and a few politicians thrown in. And I have met a few women whose specialty was to entertain men. Some were really good at it.



For many years I had an interest (it seems to be subsiding now) in the photography of the undraped female. Finding females to undrape is now no more difficult than finding models to not undrape. But years back in the dawn of Expo 86 it was tough. I developed a relationship with a few “directors” of stripper agencies. Through them I met some voluptuous women, some voluptuous women who were charming, and even some voluptuous women who were not only charming but delightful and ready to take it all off in a matter of seconds. Since I have always been the type of person who eases in slowly into a cold swimming pool my methods were sometimes at odds with these charmers who seemed to be in a hurry.

Every once in a while Ken would call me up and say, “Alex I have this new friend who is beautiful. You might find her interesting. I would make an arrangement to meet the interesting friend in my studio. Thanks to these charmers I honed my skills in glamour photography. I used experimental lighting methods and best of all I made some interesting friends. Here are two. The dark haired woman was called Gillian and the blonde was Tracy. The latter wore an S&M outfit that is beyond the boundaries of this blog so the two images of her here will do.



As I watched my neighbours in their spotlessly new vehicles I wonder if their entertainment ever goes beyond the micro thin layer of photons on a computer monitor or a flat-screen TV. There is a world out there that is not so clean, it may be seamy, but it is real. It has three dimensions. It has thickness. I would be flabergasted if they ever lowered their windows and asked me to smell my roses.

The girls are charmers, too.