Wednesday, March 04, 2009

When I visit Alleyne and Barbara Cook’s North Vancouver garden in June I automatically rush to gaze and smell a Damask rose called ‘Ispahan’. It was brought to Europe in the XIII century. Named after the ancient city in Iran this wonderful rose transports me into the exotic times, and places of the stories of Scheherazade. The last thought in my mind as I take in the wonderful fragrance of this pink rose is a huge building with thousands of spinning centrifuges enriching uranium to atomic bomb grade.

In the late 50s and even into the 60s I would often take a look at the bottom plate of my Pentacon F 35mm SLR and read with wonder, embossed on the strip of real black leather, Made In USSR Occupied Zone. It wasn’t too long ago that if I spotted a clunky Russian Lada I would stop and stare and examine its metal as if steel from the USSR were as exotic as the rings of Saturn.

My vision of Mexico in the 50s was of Aztec priests ripping open the chests of beautiful dark Tlaxcalan virgins with an obsidian knife and tearing out the still palpitating hearts that were then offered to that nasty and blood-thirsty war god Huitzilopochtli. I had no vision of white sandy beaches and piña coladas.

Before you could order chili-avocado sushi at a Tacubaya Starbucks in Mexico City, the exotic for me was the remote, the romantic and the unknown. The world for me was a plate of roast beef, mashed potatoes and salad on one plate, but all in their separate sector. I was careful that the gravy would not spread in the direction of the salad. As the world has become more the same in a globalized blend there is little left that is exotic.


In 1999 I was assigned to photograph five female Native Canadian filmmakers. Alas, the one I knew, Dana Claxton was a no show. The four that showed up at my studio (on separate days) were like Ispahan roses. I was in awe of them. I had never been this close to a Native Canadian except for a few snaps of Chief Dan George many years before at a CBC variety show.

When Loretta Todd opened a box that contained a turquoise necklace, its colour made me think that I was on acid (an experience of my imagination since I never touched the stuff).



But it was when Arlene Bowman, a Dine (Navajo) from Phoenix, Arizona came into my studio that I thought I was staring at a living and breathing Edward S. Curtis photogravure. I had to photograph her in profile. I was magically transported back in time.

Now in the year of 2009 I search for the wonder of the exotic. Should I run into a blank, June is around the corner and Rosa ‘Ispahan’ beckons as I think of sipping cool pomegranate juice while being told wondrous stories by a beautiful veiled maiden.

Native Canadian Princesses

Photogravure

More Photogravures

My Pentacon F

Tuesday, March 03, 2009



I received a polite notification yesterday from VLM/myvancouver editor/art director/publisher Bob Mercer (left) that he was ceasing publication of his magazine just about when the third incarnation of myvancouver was to appear on selected Vancouver doorsteps.

From my initial collaboration with Mercer in March 2007 I grew to like a man who had a vision to dream against all odds. I kept thinking to myself, "What does this man know about magazines that in my 35 years of working for them I don't know?" Had he really asked for my advice I would have told him, "Don't mortgage your house, don't launch this magazine. You will not succeed." I was critical of his efforts, but only marginally so as I wanted to keep my ability to dream. With Mercer's VLM I could dream about anything and somehow find a way of getting his positive nod, my execution of the assignment as both a written and photographic piece, and then anticipate the days until I would see that dream on the cover of VLM or prominently displayed inside with an elegant design and exquisite reproduction of my images.

While I was dreaming I was silently telling myself, "Mercer, you are a fool to hope that Vancouverites will embrace a good magazine in an age of aggregators that compile bad blogs about boring issues that are regurgitated from a declining media base that is replacing professional journalists with amateurs."

Ours is not an age of citizen journalism but one I would better call amateur journalism. The word amateur as used by the British of the 19th century denoted men (mostly men) and women who eschewed profit to embark on causes such as archeology, anthropology, botany, exploration, etc with a deep reverence and passion. These amateurs are a far cry from the amateurs of today who give us opinions on anything just because they can press and send.

"And even if you are a fool, Mercer," I kept thinking, "don't quit now. Give me room to dream. Give me room to think of people I would like to photograph and write about. Give me the opportunity to photograph Vancouver's most beautiful woman, Gloria Macarenko, give me the opportunity to photograph my friend Sean Rossiter with one of his model airplanes, give me the chance to photograph those wondrous ballet boys from Arts Umbrella and explore why they have a passion for dance." Mercer was foolish enough to keep his magazine going while I dreamt and dreamt to my heart's content.

With VLM/myvancouver gone, my capacity to see my dreams as real (the very reason why as fourth kind of fool I chose 35 years ago to become an editorial photographer) has now been diminished to just about zero. My only comfort is that Mercer, in spite of being a fool, had a great capacity to dream.

Mercer may have failed (he vows he will return in the fall) but I wonder if failure in such things is not amply compensated by that long run of dreams?




Three Fools & Gloria Macarenko
Monday, March 05, 2007



I have observed three fools in action over the years and when they finally give up there are many more of the type to occupy their place. These fools have the ambition to:

1. Publish and or edit a magazine, tabloid or newspaper.
2. Start an art gallery.
3. Open a restaurant.

It was quite a few years ago that Urban Peasant, James Barber had to withdraw from his Commercial Drive restaurant venture Arriva. He was losing his shirt. But he went on the record in a magazine article, how the experience had not turned him off. He asserted that when the opportunity rose he would start a restaurant again.

Dianne Farris once told me that she had not only mortgaged her house away to keep her gallery going but that she was also painting herself into a plumbing corner as the bathrooms did not work. But she was going to press on with her dream.

I think it is the dream that keeps these three "fools" going. You have an idea, and reality (with its instant satisfaction) can be quick in coming if you publish a weekly or a daily. I have been privy to conversations between publishers and editors where the former would swear a no inteference policy so as to keep an editorial independence. And I have seen these promises disappear as "service" peaces became the norm for keeping a magazine afloat.

As a photographer I have been promised more times than I can possibly remember, "This is a new magazine and we can only afford this much, but as soon as we become more successful we will pay you what you are really worth." I have seen young photographers, illustrators and freelance writers be given "photo" or "writing" credits instead of hard cash. I have never had the heart or the gumption to tell them that money will never come and photo credits are not proper collateral at the bank.

But would be gallery owners, restauranteurs and publisher/editors keep passing by my horizon and for the latter I am almost never able to say, "No," when asked to help out for little or no money.

Could it be that I am a dreamer, too?

The prospect of seeing a magazine with my cover photo has always been an exciting delight. My latest effort is no less a delight. It was about a month ago that experienced editor/art director Bob Mercer told me he had the project to re-brand the most horrible (my word) magazine in Vancouver.



He said he wanted to turn around Vancouver Lifestyles Magazine (now called VLM)and wanted bold b+w covers. Best of all (this is how he lured me in) he wanted me to suggest who was the person I would want to photograph the most.

My answer was an easy one. I photographed the luminous Gloria Macarenko assisted by my secret weapon of so many years, stylist Maureen Willick.

When the magazine appeared last week I could not believe, that just for once, the spread looked better than I had imagined it.

I can only hope that editor/art director Bob Mercer's dream comes true.

Monday, March 02, 2009


As the change in how the world and in particular those in Vancouver view photography, its purpose and its attraction I find that what I do is no different from re-gapping sparkplugs. It seems to me that my portrait photography is as obsolete as that skill (I was pretty good at it) of adjusting the gaps of the four sparkplugs of my Mexican VW beetle. After cleaning them and adjusting that gap with my precision gap tool I would take the VW up a hill and listen for engine hesitation. I would stop to rotate the distributor a bit in one direction or the other until the engine sounded just right.

For the 11 years that I have been taking portraits of my granddaughter Rebecca I have been criticized by the family for not making her smile. The first picture here, one that I took in 2004, is my favourite portrait of Rebecca. I have a beautiful 16x20 inch print, nicely framed on the wall next to my bed. When I wake up in the morning or before I turn off my reading light at night I look at it and my heart aches at her beauty and that look on her face.





On my first year at the Catholic boarding school in Austin, St Eds (1957) there was a curious Catholic brother, curious because he could alternate friendliness with a cold, almost nasty seriousness. I was scared of him. His name was Brother Stanley Repucci CSC. Our nickname for him was “The Fat Sh..”. Brother Stanley had a fondness for pizza and he would go by all the school dormitories on Friday or Saturday evenings recruiting boys who might want to accompany him for pizza. In those days pizza joints came with red and white checkered table cloths with wicker Chianti bottles with candles. When I had the money, this was infrequent, I would tag along. Brother Stanley taught me to crave pizza at all times.



Brother Stanley taught physics and biology. He had a busy schedule as he headed the school’s rifle, bowling team and the Boy Scouts. He was always surrounded by young boys as he was in charge of the Cubs that were in the 8th grade.

Brother Stanley was tough and he never ever had any kind of discipline problems. It was Brother Stanley who concocted ways of making us excel in his classes promoting competition in unusual ways. Once, in our biology class, he asked us to open up some frogs and sew them back together. The boy, whose frog survived, would get a prize. More often than not the prize was a box of cigars. I think that because of it few of us ever smoked. Brother Stanley understood the mind of boys.



In our innocence and naivety we never thought that Brother Stanley had any kind of ulterior motives for his interest in us. In fact in my four years of boarding I was never aware of any scandal of any kind. Even in those days when we talked to prefects and our Brother teachers in their rooms the doors were kept open.

Brother Stanley died some years ago and his picture in the school web site lists him as Mr. Stanley Repucci. I found that odd and I wondered. But my fellow classmate and distinguished law professor at St. Mary’s University at San Antonio, Lee Lytton III and I both agreed on the reason. Brother Stanley left the order, got married and had children of his own.


There are many who think that the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carol) may have had an unhealthy relationship with Alice Liddell. Both Lytton and I believe that Dodgson and Brother Stanley had a healthy love of children. They loved to inspire, entertain and nurture them. Brother Stanley and the Reverend Dodgson treated children as adults. In this century we are too rapid to judge and think the worse of people. The idea of a healthy love for children that is not a motherly or fatherly one is suspect. I guess I am almost safe when I take pictures of Rebecca as an adult because I am the grandfather.

The most useful advice (it felt brutal at the time) I have ever received from anyone came via Brother Stanley. I had decided to drop his physics class. It was too difficult and I did not want a low grade in the course to affect my high average. With that scary face of his (when he was serious) he looked at me squarely in the eye and told me, “It is hard to quit. It is hard for you to quit now. But you will find that it becomes easier when you practice. One day you will be an expert quitter.” I have never forgotten and when possible I have stuck to my guns.



I don’t think I ever baby talked to Rebecca and when she faced my camera I gave her no instruction. I respected her for what she was and is, a little adult. I have taken her to ballet and dance with somewhat adult material and I have spoken to her candidly about stuff that would have shocked her other grandmother. But I feel that Brother Stanley’s guidance is the correct way to educate a young person.

When my daughter Alexandra was 14 she was going through some rebellion. She was sometimes rude and uncommunicative. I decided that I needed to make a father and son road trip, even if she were my daughter and not my son. I had a, bright blue Fiat X-19 mid-engine sports car. I bought Bruce Springsteen’s The River, removed the top from the car and headed with Ale to San Francisco via the coast highway. On our first night we arrived somewhere in Oregon (note the picture of Ale by the Oregon coast, below). We went into a motel and the man behind the desk looked at us in disgust. It suddenly occurred to me what the man thought. How could I correct the situation? I knew how. I loudly told Ale, “Call your mother, if not she is going to worry.” The man looked at me with derision and threw the room keys at me. It was only then that I began to understand that people think the worst and that an extension of this would be my unsettling (to them) portraits of Rebecca not acting like the child that people perceive her to be. The world needs cameras that are pre-programmed to sense big smiles. That need has been recently filled.

Rebecca’s mother, my younger daughter Hilary is most often smiling. A great many of the pictures that I took of her through the years find her smiling, smiling with my mother’s and my crooked smile. But the pictures of her sister are another matter. There are many pictures that seem to be precursors of a style that I would learn to hone with Rebecca.



I think of Brother Stanley and how serious he was but how he could also be jovial. If he were to look at my pictures of Rebecca I am sure he would seriously hand me a box of cigars. And he would then smile.

Alexandra Elizabeth's Happy Melancholy

The Serious Ones

Sunday, March 01, 2009

1869
The Personal History And
Experience Of
David Copperfield The Younger
Chapter 1
I am Born

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether
that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.
To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was
born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve
o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike,
and I began to cry, simultaneously.
Charles Dickens



One of the most enthralling short stories I have ever read is Alejo Carpentier y Valmont’s Viaje a La Semilla (Journey Back To The Source) (1943). I have found the complete story in Spanish in many sites but the only copy in English that I can secure is residing at the UBC Library where they have all of this Cuban author’s output both in English and in Spanish. My $100 annual fee has lapsed so whoever wants to read this delightful story written with time going backwards, will have to do so in Spanish. The story ends with the nails of a brigantine anchored in a Cuban port, zooming away to the iron mines from whose ore they were extracted and the ship's oak planks flying away to a distant forest from whence they came.

Time has been on my mind of late and in particular my abhorrence for linear time. We moved to our present home in 1986 and our bed is exactly where it was then. I remember our first night after I placed our recently purchased French antique clock on the fireplace mantle of the den (then called the smoking room as I smoked pipes there). I could hear the clock striking the hour (I forget but it was late) and bent my head back to look out of the window. I remember telling Rosemary that I could not believe that we had moved to such a beautiful house. It was quiet and no long-haired neighbours would suddenly rush in next door (as they had so often done in our old strata title home in Burnaby) with cartons of beer and sing along to Creedence Clearwater Revival into the wee hours of the morning.

Time has passed, 23 years. But I still turn my head and look out of the window and marvel at it all.



It was yesterday that Rosemary made an astonishing statement in my direction. “You are not long for this world. You live in the past. You tell me what your mother (her watch given to her by my father, right) would have done. Everything was perfect then. It is all wanting now. You are most unhappy now. There is no sense for you to go on in such a state.” I was left speechless. I thought about it quietly. I thought about the past and about time.

It was around 1984 that I wanted to begin to write when I received a most important piece of advice from my friend and writer Les Wiseman. He told me, “You never begin a story from the beginning. You start somewhere in the middle and then work yourself both ways." This has served me well as it seems that most people wanting to tell a story and put it on paper invariably begin at the beginning. Time for them, as it is for most of us, is linear.

Without wishing to tell Rosemary that she is entirely wrong about my scrutiny into my past, I would like to clarify if not correct that my concern is a constant back and forth assessment on how the past put me into the present and how a backward glance might just reveal a forward path.

I do believe that as a human I like to maintain a sense of order. I want to know where things came from and where they are going. If I had a friend who disappeared in my past and almost in my memory I would like to pin my friend down, analyze why we are no longer friends (distance, physical separation). I try to locate my erstwhile friend, renew the friendship if possible or at the very least be able to neatly close the drawer.

It was sometime around 1988 when I went to Buenos Aires for the first time since I had left in 1966 after finishing a two year stint as a conscript in the Argentine Navy. I rang the bell at the home of Susy, an ex-girlfriend I had last seen in 1966 (was madly in love with her) and managed to survive her instruction, "Alex aren't you going to kiss me?" When she died of cancer a few years back I closed her drawer even though memories persist and are there to call back on demand.



Going to my St. Ed's High School reunion this June will put me into the same mode of looking back and pushing forward at the same time. I will study the bond my classmates shared for those four years we boarded in the great neo-Gothic building. Perhaps I will not have anything in common with the dentist, the lawyers, the funeral director, the adobe brick factory owner, the rice farmer, the bean counter who denies ever to have worked for the CIA, the contractor who profits from Texas coast hurricanes, the cowboy rancher who raises quarter horses, the NASA physicist, the PHD in nuclear energy, and the memory of my friend who in a Catholic school had the audacity to proclaim his belief in no God.

If nothing arises from the reunion I will at least be able to again enjoy when I chat with my ex-religion and saxophone teacher, Brother Edwin Reggio, CSC, the unlikely occurrence that back in 1959 I would have never considered (had I looked into the future as my Rosemary suggests I do more often) that some day he, Brother Edwin, and my 10-year-old granddaughter Rebecca would sit next to each other and bite into a huge plate of Texas barbecue.

Time plays a curious game when we temporarily lose our sense of linearity. I had first learned about Einsteinian time in 1963 when my physics professor Chicurel told us the story of the two trains going in the same direction. In 1964 in my train leaving from the Retiro station in downtown Buenos Aires, I happened to glance out of the window and noticed that another train was leaving in the same direction. For a while it looked like both trains were not moving even though I could feel the vibration under my feet and hear the clickety-clack of the wheels. Then the other train accelerated and it seemed we were going backwards. I was amused as I considered that time was not what it seemed.



Since I was lucky enough to not be assigned to an Argentine naval base (the Argentine Navy prized my ability to translate English into Spanish) it meant that I had to pay for my lodgings in the Beccar (a suburb of Buenos Aires) home of a retired Nazi officer. The food was good, the price was right and I kept to myself. Knowing I needed funds one of my sailor mates, Victor Corrales (standing behind me in the photo above, asked me if I were willing to work with him as a waiter weekends in a cantina (bar that served food and had musical entertainment) in the legendary area of Buenos Aires, La Boca. The joint was called Paquebot Priano. The picture shows three of my Argentine Navy sailor mates, all dressed in black and three US Marines who worked with us at the Senior US Naval Advisory Group. It was after working until the wee hours of the morning that I would ride the train back to Beccar. One day, I will never forget, I fell asleep on the bed I was so tired. When I woke up it was late afternoon of the next day. It was six o'clock. I felt a bit tired but ultimately after a coffee I was refreshed. It all vanished when I noticed that the light was acting strangely. It was getting lighter not darker. That's when I knew it was six o'clock in the morning and that I had only slept at the most two hours.

Time (its ravages) is most evident when I go into my photo files and noticing how some of my photographs are stained (bad fixing and time accelerates the staining) or how I must labour at getting the colour right when I scan old colour negatives. But time seems strange when Rosemary and I file old family photographs, "Alex they will appreciate it when we are gone."

What that really means, and I will not mention it at all to Rosemary, is that we will be helping our daughters and granddaughters to explore their past, our past and what remains of our future.

The Magical Filipino Timex





Marking Time

Astern there was a closed door that he had never breached. From that place now came, very loud, a ticking, multiple and unsynchronized...After much hesitation, he made up his mind. He used the butt of his musket, broke the lock and entered...Clocks. Water clocks, sand clocks, solar clocks propped against the walls, but especially mechanical clocks arrayed on various shelves and chests, clocks moved by the slow descent of weights and counterweights, by wheels that bit into other wheels....

It may seem incredible - to you who read this with detachment - but imagine a castaway, amid the fumes of aqua vitae, on an unhabited vessel, finding a hundred clocks almost all in unison telling the tale of his interminable time; he must think of the tale before thinking of its author. And this is what Roberto did as he examined those toys one by one....The clocks were functioning, thus someone must have set them in motion, even if their winding had been designed to last a long time. And if they had been wound before his arrival, he would have heard them already, passing by that door.
...On the ship an intruder did exist.

He had entered the room and had wound the mechanisms. Why he had done so was the first but less urgent question. The second was where had he then taken refuge.
From "The Island of the Day Before", Umberto Eco, 1994

Saturday, February 28, 2009


Yesterday I found myself having a pleasant short walk (a very cold but clear evening) from my house to the Unity Church on Oak and 42 Street. I was going to a Early Music Vancouver concert featuring the Axelrod Quartet the resident Smithsonian Museum of American History chamber music quartet. The Axelrod is headed by our very own Marc Destrubé (Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Turning Point Ensemble and several more etcs!) on first violin. Marilyn McDonald played the second violin, James Dunham, viola and Kennth Slowik, violoncello.

Slowik explained in a charming pre-concert talk with slides and some piano-playing-show-and-tell. The music of the evening consisted of an early and a late Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy ( 1809-1827) quartet for strings and the phenomenal and ever popular Octet for Strings in E-flat Major, Op. 20 (1825). Slowik pointed out that the connection of the evening’s concert to the mandate of Early Music Vancouver was twofold. The concert was being played in instruments more or less from or adapted to the time Mendelssohn’s music was first performed. Thus the sound would be pretty close to what the people of the time would have been used to. Then Slowik told us that Dunham’s viola had been built in the late 1500s!

But this blog is not about last night’s concert per se (even though I enjoyed it immensely), but about two people and the prints of Jack Shadbolt.

I had never been inside this church. There are no crosses that I could discern inside and instead of pews they had upholstered seating much like in a cinema. The only religious symbol I found was a print of a shepherd holding a sheep on altar right. The altar itself was bare except for many plants and the musicians’ chairs. On the side walls I noticed about 16 beautifully framed bold, multi-coloured Jack Shadbolt prints. I was so amazed that I questioned Dr. Stephen Drance, a lover of music who believes in donating money in order to listen to his preferences. “I don’t think it is out of the ordinary, after all this is the 21st century!” While Dr Drance is much older than I am, he is certainly the younger man.

Whenever I go to theatre, dance, opera, ballet and concerts of all types I run into a short friendly French Canadian, Denis Bouvier. I affectionately have given him the nick name of Inspector Clouseau. Bouvier has been with Radio Canada since I first arrived in Vancouver in 1975. He is the “Réalisateur”of a two hour long afternoon radio program called Le pont des Arts. Imagine two hours full of cultural entertainment when the English side, of our local CBC Radio, perhaps features at the most 15 minutes per day!

I like the French word for producer Réalisateur because it is much like it is in Spanish realizador. It means to make true. This Radio Canada producer makes our wishes come true with an enthusiasm that is as palpable as his smile.

As I see that smile on Bouvier’s face I wonder what it is that Radio Canada knows about cultural coverage that seems to elude the English side where culture is placed at the bottom. As a CBC Radio producer told me with a promise to not use his/her name, “In Vancouver and especially in the interior its sports and labour problems.”

I was introduced by Turning Point Orchestra trombonist Jeremy Berkman to a friendly woman, Yolaine Mottet who is the Animatrice for Bouvier’s Le pont des Arts. I asked her point blank what it was they knew about culture and arts programs that the English CBC did not know. She said nothing. I asked her who on the English side would be responsible for the no-culture programming. Again not only did she say nothing but she turned her hands up in a “How should I know?” I have a feeling that many other people challenge her with the same question.

I pressed further. “How can you find people who speak French for you daily programs? You must run out quickly." With that smile of hers she told me that they had interviewed Axelrod Quartet cellist Kenneth Slowik who had not spoken French for some years but magically remembered enough of it quickly, to give them a good interview.

Thinking about Dr. Drance’s liberal non surprise at seeing Shadbolts in a church and mulling in my head Bouvier’s all-encompassing appreciation and love for all art (or at the very least this man has varied tastes) Milton Glasser came to mind. Not Milton Glasser the famous designer of the little red heart of I love NY fame but another who was an important mentor in my appreciation of music.



My Milton Glasser was a Jewish dentist from New York who once told me, “I have always tickled the ivories. I used to when I was a dentist and I keep on now when I accompany Jean on the piano.” Retired dentist Glasser had moved to Mexico City in the early 70s with his virtuoso violinist and violist wife Jean who had been hired as principal violinist for the orchestra of the University of Mexico. The Glassers invited us to their home for pre-concerts which featured Jean’s excellent cooking. We treasured those afternoons at the Glasser and they became our eldest daughter’s first exposure to performed music.

I got into several arguments with Milton Glasser (in the second picture that's my wife Rosemary on the left) about music. I told him I had a preference for Italian baroque and for Bach. “I am not interested in the least in what followed, especially those Romantics.” Glasser with a kind smile on his face told me repeatedly but gently, “You will change your mind one day. Mark my words.” I now realize that at age 31 I was an ignorant, biased and opinionated idiot. There are some (including my wife) who would say that I have not changed except that I am older.

The Glassers had a son, Alan, who was (and is) a plasma physicist of fame. He played the clarinet so when he visited his parents we were exposed to trios of clarinet, piano and violin or viola. This is how I first heard the music of Ernest Bloch. But my favourite was a trio version of Pablo de Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen. One day Milton Glasser sat at the piano and played some confusing music that I almost liked. It was interesting. “What is it? “I asked. It is one of Darius Milhaud’s Saudades do Brazil. He wrote 10. He lived in Brazil for some years and fell in love with it.” In spite of my youthful ignorance I knew that one of my fave jazz pianists Dave Brubeck had studied under Milhaud. Suddenly I could hear a little Brubeck in those Milhaud piano sonatas.

And while I am sure the Glassers are no longer alive in New York, I am sure that in some way, from somewhere they smile upon my more varied and universal tastes in music. Back then I would not have been caught dead listening to a Mendelssohn quartet.

Could it be that it has taken me this long to find out something that the French have always known?

Friday, February 27, 2009




Last night's premiere of The Goldberg Variations – Side 2: Adam & Eve & Steve, by Ballet BC at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre was a felicitous event. It was more so as my companion was not my granddaughter Rebecca who is suddenly eschewing all dance for the dressing up of celebrities at Stardoll. My companion was her mother, my daughter Hilary, who had not been to the ballet for some time. She greeted The Goldberg Variations and Jean Grand-Maître's Carmen with awe, delight, smiles and contented attacks on our stock of dark bitter chocolate. In short it was an evening that Hilary and I will not soon forget.

From the point of view of this amateur, Kudelka's work consists of an inner core of three dancers, Simone Orlando, Jones Henry and Shannon Smith and an outer frame (much like a beautiful and ornate gold leaf frame at an expensive gallery) of dancers, Marrianne Bauer-Grobbelaar, Alexis Fletcher, Maggie Forgeron, Shannon Ferguson, León Feizo-Gas, Connon Gnam, Peter Smida and Daniel da Silva. This frame of beautiful young boys in short shorts and girls in costumes so light in texture and in substance (designed by Nancy Bryant) revealed more well-formed and muscular thighs (the girls’, I mean, and I must point out that Alexis Fletcher has thighs and legs to compete with those of my idol-of-legs actress Alexis Smith) that I have ever seen in any ballet of memory. It was exotic eye candy with movements that were all classical ballet.

During the action I trained my eyes to blur them out a bit as I was transfixed by veteran dancer Jones Henry whom Kudelka has managed to elicit a performance that would suggest that as soon as Ballet BC secures funds they might have to raise his salary to keep him on! I found myself watching his face as well as Simone Orlando's and Shannon Smith's for the delicate expressions of confusion and doubt (Jones Henry) warmth and understanding (Simone Orlando) and perfect confidence (Shannon Smith). These three, used movements that were striking, in their almost anti-balletic look. They contrasted with the constant swerving and swirling of the outer Corps de Ballet. And I watched, and watched Simone Orlando and how her beautiful dress (for more read below) swished at Kudelka's beckoning much in the same way as so many years ago Lauri Stalling's hair had done so for his 15 Heterosexual Duets. All in all, The Goldberg Variations was an unsettling, pleasing and demanding work with substance in an age that unsettles, pleases with banalities and substance is absent.


I have been upset of late in the knowledge that both the strong Donald Sales and the tall and cool Edmond Kilpatrick are gone from Ballet BC. I feel better. I am a new fan of Australian Shannon Smith who was perfect in his contrast to the pathos of the confused (so wonderfully confused) Jones Henry whose face and a few small and calculated steps seemed to be a window into his soul.

Of Carmen I can only say that Hilary thinks that Shannon Smith is a most manly Don José. Jones Henry pulled all sorts of dazzling veronicas in spite of not having a matador's cape. Makailla Wallace's performance as Carmen's foil, Micaella (the last time around she played Carmen) had shades of that classical ballerina of a Ballet BC recent past, Andrea Hodge who is now the company's Ballet Mistress along with Beverley Bagg.

Of Marianne Bauer-Grobbelaar's Carmen, her red hair and that crooked smile brought me unsettling (the more unsettling for this old man of 66) responses in my nether parts as she reminded me of Vancouver's best ever exotic dancer Tarren Rae. Her performance was as spirited as that of a haughty mustang in heat. But her temper tantrums (only for me I vouch) did not convince me as much as that of the fiery ones of that real kitchen-plate-smasher and Ballet BC's first Carmen, Sandrine Cassini.

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Of Simone Orlando's Photo Above, of Nancy Bryant's Wonderful Dress and James Kudelka's Instructions


Years ago when I started shooting variety shows at the CBC when it has just moved to its modern premises on Hamilton Street I had to compete with a few photographers for jobs. The jobs paid well so we all tried to out-compete each other. One of my competition was photographer David Cooper who pretty well shoots most of dance and theatre in Vancouver. Cooper has always looked ahead and he was one of the first to see the rapid preeminence of digital over film. Cooper went beyond even that and learned to make digital montages that were seamless in their perfection. He most certainly has earned his reputation of being the best not only in Vancouver but in the rest of Canada.

While I was wrapping my cameras in thick Argentine wool blankets ( a hole in front for the lens and a hole in the back to look through) to prevent the director from throwing me out for making clicking noises during the show tapings I noticed that Cooper had an expensive and well made Lucite blimp. This device (the best are made in California for professional golf photographers) envelops a camera but leaves room for the photographer's manual control. It was easy to see that Cooper finally abandoned the declining business of TV variety shows and shifted with his blimp to shooting theatre.

When I started shooting dance around 1995 for the Georgia Straight I had to make a decision. How was I going to shoot dancers? Would I try to out-Cooper Cooper and shoot dancers in the air in perfect and graceful poise looking as if they were indeed swans in flight? To begin with I did not have a large studio with a very high ceiling and a coved back wall to give the illusion of an infinite background. Since I have always been a portrait photographer I decided that I would shoot portraits of dancers at rest and I would even avoid dancerly poses.

This decision has served me well until last week when the Straight assigned me to photograph Simone Orlando in her part of the principal dancer of James Kudelka's The Goldberg Variations – Side 2: Adam & Eve & Steve. The shot would involve the only pre premiere look (Thursday) use of the specially designed dress by Nancy Bryant. Kudelka, a man of precision even sent me instructions on how to take the pictures via Ballet BC's most pleasant publicist Laura Murray. In private Ms Murray must have had reservations on how I would take being directed in a shoot considering that in most editorial photographic shoots the photographer must have independence over the organization to be photographed. Initially I was a bit put out but I then decided to rise up to the challenge and that I would try to please a man (I have yet to meet him.) who as artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada would know more about what he wanted in a photograph of the principal female lead of his ballet than I. There was one problem. It seemed he wanted me to do Cooper.



For the first time in many years I was worried, not sure of what I was going to do. What kept me going was the realization that I would have Simone Orlando, all to myself in my studio. No matter how close you sit at a Ballet BC performance or how powerful your binoculars may be, having Orlando in front of you a foot or two away has no comparison. Orlando began to explain what the dance was all about. I had been denied the opportunity to watch a rehearsal. I had nothing to go on. Orlando told me that in this dance she was sort of a Fascist and her moves were un-ballet, quite rigid and soldier-like, but here is the catch, from the waist down her beautiful dark sequined skirt would swirl with the movement. I was to catch both. Then Orlando used a word I have never heard before, "The picture must not be balletic." I asked for clarification. It seemed that the image she had in mind (as well as Kudelka's mind) was a picture that did not show a dancer in graceful flight, all perfect form. I warmed to the idea immediately!

To take the picture you see here I exposed 10 frames of 120 Ektachrome 100G. I set my exposure at between f-11 and f-16 knowing that if I set my shutter at 1/2 second, the quartz modeling light of my 3x4 ft softbox would cast enough light to expose the film and blur the skirt. I put a piece of tape on the floor and Orlando moved to the position while I pressed the shutter. Just in case I shot a roll of colour negative which gives more allowance for exposure error. Orlando's favourite from that roll is here. The colour and the look is different from the slide.

I was not entirely alone with Simone Orlando in my studio. We had Ballet BC wardrobe manager, Kate Burrows who brought Orlando a new pair of shoes and did last minute alterations of that sequined dress. With the guidance of the two women I was bound to succeed. I managed to catch the elusive Kudelka backstage (God to many in the ballet world). God spoke, "Alex you got some movement in that photograph."

Thursday, February 26, 2009


On April 7, 2007, Holy Saturday, I wrote part of what is below here. I reflected on those words tonight (I am writing this, late Wednesday). I had left much unsaid. I knew I had to somehow correct my mistake of omission. My friend Mark Budgen and I have been following via e-mail, he by the web-based Manchester Guardian, me by the on-line Argentine La Nación, the events that culminated with the expulsion,a couple of days ago, from Argentina of Bishop Richard Williamson a fervent denier of the Holocaust.


Perhaps my grandmother would have been shocked at it all or perhaps her anti-Semitic stance was only a Spanish 19th century upbringing. On Good Fridays, In Buenos Aires around the late 40s, and the beginning of the 50s I was not allowed to turn on the radio and at 3 pm we would kneel on the living room floor in our Coghlan home and she would take us through the Stations of the Cross in Latin. I distinctly remember her telling me how the evil Jews had crucified Him. When describing people's faces she would sometimes say, "She has the map of Jerusalem on her face." Or she would switch to her alternate, “Es un paisano de Jesucristo,” "He is one of Jesus' countrymen."

But she never ever uttered a critical word about my best friend who lived across the street on Melián 2779. He was Mario Hertzberg. He, Miguelito (I have long forgotten his Calabrian surname) and I were inseparable and we were known as the inglesito (the English boy) el tano (the Italian) and el judío (the Jew).

Mario had two brothers but he once showed me the photograph of a third who looked much the same as he did except he was fatter and wore glasses. "That was my older brother but he died at a place called Auschwitz." At age 8 I did not have enough curiousity to pursue the subject any further.

One day Mario and I went to see a Tarzan movie at the Saturday series sponsored by our local Capuchin monks who were building a very large new church next door to the little community center and movie house. They charged us a token fee but we knew our money was going to a good cause. As we left after the show we were approached by a chubby Capuchin who asked us our names. He asked me to what church I went to. When he questioned Mario, Mario replied, "I don't go to church I am a Jew." I will never forget the Capuchin’s smile as he placed his hand on Mario's arm and told us, "We share the same God and that is what is important." I thought about that for the rest of the day but I never confronted my grandmother with what to me was a clear difference of opinion.

I lost track of Mario Hertzberg when I was 21.


When I wrote the above I was candid to a point. But I did not elaborate. I had returned to Argentina from my home in Mexico to do my military service. This was the reason I had given my mother. The real reason was that I was going to search for my father whom my mother and grandmother had abandoned some ten years before in 1954, with me in tow, because he had become an impossible alcoholic. I felt a pull for my father and for Buenos Aires. I was an impossible romantic and I talked about “my country” and “my land.” My father was part of that landscape, the Argentine pampa.

When I arrived to Buenos Aires I searched for Mario in the hopes that he might know my father’s whereabouts. I was immediately offered the hospitality of his home. He still lived on Melián 2779 in Coghlan. His father had died. I was greeted warmly by his mother. Mario had a beautiful girlfriend who looked exactly like Susan Strasberg. While I was being enrolled into the Argentine Navy, I had some time to search for my father. Mario told me had spotted him walking the nearby street of Monroe near the Pirovano Hospital. A couple of times my father had approached Mario and asked him if he knew where I had been taken to. In the end I did locate my father and that is a story I have told before in another posting.

I remember my bed at Mario’s. It had an under sheet and above me was a large heavy duvet. I had never seen or slept under one before. Mrs. Hertzberg told me I could stay for as long as I wanted until I found a place or, worse, was sent to some remote naval base, and, even worse, some antiquated tin can like the battleship General Belgrano.

In the interim I had contacted the Irish branch of my family, the O’Reilly’s and the English branch, the Haywards. My uncle Freddy Hayward, after much persistent nagging on my part, told me that my father had approached him for information on me, “I gave him some money and sent him away.”

Inesita O’Reilly, my godmother and first cousin offered her home for me to stay until my boarding situation was solved. I recall that one of my nephews said something like, “You cannot possibly want to stay in that house with that Jew.” I remember to my embarrassment that I said nothing. One day during the afternoon I left Mario’s house with all my belongings. I did not leave a note. As my grandmother would have said, “Te despediste a la francesa,” or you left without saying goodbye. To this day the Spanish use this expression in commemoration of the hasty retreat of the French army when Wellington’s troops entered Spain. I never saw Mario again. Or at least that's the way I would like to remember it.

One year later, when I was getting off a train in Retiro (I was in uniform) I spotted Mario and he recognized me. I turned around and left the train by another door.

Four years before I had argued with many who confronted me with the news that Adolf Eichmann had been captured and then kidnapped by Israeli agents in 1960.

Eichmann was apprehended by a team of Mossad and Shabak agents in a suburb of Buenos Aires on May 11, 1960, as part of a covert operation. The Mossad agents had arrived in Buenos Aires in April 1960 after Eichmann's identity was confirmed. After observing Eichmann for an extensive period of time, a team of Mossad agents waited for him as he arrived home from his work as foreman at a Mercedes Benz factory. One kept lookout waiting for his bus to arrive while two agents pretended to be fixing a broken down car. An unconfirmed fourth would ride on the bus to make sure he would leave. Once Eichmann alighted and began walking the short distance to his home, he was asked by the agent at the car, Zvi Aharoni, for a cigarette. When Eichmann reached in his pocket he was set upon by the two by the car. Eichmann fought but team member Peter Malkin, a Polish Jew and a black belt in karate, knocked Eichmann unconscious with a strike to the back of his neck and bundled him into the car and took him to the safe house. In the safe house a preliminary interrogation was conducted and it was proved that Klement (Clement) was undoubtedly the Nazi Eichmann.

I argued up and down that no matter how heinous his crimes, Eichmann was an Argentine citizen and the Israelis had denied him due process. My friends looked at me in horror. I remember telling them that the world was black or white and gray did not exist. Things were either this way or that way and the law was the law.

My only excuse now is probably an indefensible and distorted impetuosity of youthful idealism blended with out and out ignorance.

In the picture above, taken on my birthday on August 31st, 1951, the little boy in darkness on the left is Mario. That's me in the centre in the front row and my father is in the back.

Mario, even if it is far too late, I am sorry.