Wednesday, September 23, 2009


I wrote about Nan Fairchild Sherlock & Matteuccia struthiopteris here. I remembered here this afternoon as I was walking in the garden. Rosemary was crawling on her bum with the special boot on her left ankle to keep it in place. We were cutting back stuff and deciding which plants I am going to have to move. I noticed that one of my ostrich ferns (the botanical name is the one above!) had fronds that were dried out and how beautiful they were. I also noticed that like most of my ostrich ferns this one had the handsome almost black fertile fronds (see link above) in the middle that came out at about this time. I cut some of the dried out fronds to scan them and as I was bringing them in I thought of the fall jazz standard Autum Leaves and how Hilary’s godfather, Raúl Guerrero Montemayor would often tell me that this perennial jazz standard was not always so. It had been composed for a film with Yves Montand who introduced the song Les Feuilles Mortes in the 1946 film Les Portes De La Nuit, a gloomy urban drama set in post World War II Paris. Raúl would further tell me that the composer Joseph Kosma was Hungarian and that Jacques Prevert created one of the songs for Les Portes De La Nuit by setting a Prevert poem to music, “Les Feuilles Mortes.” In 1949 Johnny Mercer wrote English lyrics for the tune changing the original French title to Autumn Leaves.

I believe that this standard is best played on a keyboard but I have a memory of another recording which has always been my favourite. Here it is. And if you don't believe everything you read on the web you might note that the instrument that Chet Baker is playing here is not a trumpet. It certainly looks like a flugelhorn to me.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009



Some weeks ago I purchased two books for Rebecca in my hopes that I can wean her away from Nancy Drew. One of the books is called Portraits – Dancing Through Fire by Kathryn Lasky. The book is set in the Paris Opera of Degas in the latter part of the 19th century and is about a little ballerina that is a tad too short. When Rebecca saw the book her comment was, “It’s too difficult. And it isn’t a mystery.” I had a suspicion she would place the book in her bookcase in her room where it would languish with many of the other books I have given her.

To be fair this has not always been the case. She has read the rose books I have given her so many times that she knows more about roses at age 12 than I did when I first started gardening in 1986.



Rosemary decided to read Rebecca the first chapter. Now the Saturday afternoon routine is that they read each other a chapter from this book and Rebecca is hooked. The Prussians are at the gates of Paris in this novel so Rosemary has been reading about the Franco/Prussian war and Napoleon III so as to answer Rebecca’s questions.

There are a few people reading to other people in our family. Rosemary has been reading and helping Lauren read her books in French so that she can move up to the level that she is supposed to be. She is not quite there. Last night when Rosemary and I were babysitting at the girls’ house it was awfully quiet. It was 9 pm. Rosemary told me to go upstairs to see what the girls were up to. It was a sight to warm my heart. There was Rebecca reading to Lauren in bed. I asked Rosemary if Ale had ever read to Hilary. She did not remember. I asked Hilary who confirmed my suspicions that this never happened but did mention that I had read to them frequently including Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.



Returning to the book about the ballerina, since Degas is one of the protagonists I suspect that the little novel may be partly based on Degas’ The Little Fourteen-Year-Old-Dancer, Marie Van Goethem who until had faded from history soon after she modeled for Degas. But unfortunately we now know that as soon as she grew up her mother nudged her into prostitution.



The info about the little ballerina sculpture version at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, very similar to the one at the National Gallery where Rebecca aged 5 posed for me in 2003 is as follows:

The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer; cast in 1922 from a mixed-media sculpture modeled ca. 1879–80
Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917)
Bronze, partly tinted, with cotton skirt and satin hair ribbon, on a wooden base
H. 41 1/4 in. (104.8 cm)
H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (29.100.370)
The model for this essentially realistic work is known to have been Marie Van Goethem. Born on June 7, 1865, she was a student at the École de Danse in Paris, and by 1880 she had been engaged as a dancer at the Opéra. The care with which Degas observed his model is reflected not only in the sculpture itself, but also in the unusual number of surviving sketches of the model in charcoal and pastel, as well as in a preparatory sculptural study of the figure in the nude. The title, The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (Petite danseuse de quatorze ans), given to the original mixed-media sculpture when it was exhibited by Degas in the sixth Impressionist exhibition held in Paris in 1881, provides the most solid evidence for the sculpture's date.




I have written before of my interest in the idea of that some of Degas leached into the blood of all the dancers who ever danced at the Paris Opera Ballet. When I went to Paris in the mid 80s I made sure I passed by the old opera house (not knowing that the one that Degas frequented was an ever older one that had since disappeared). I took some satisfying photographs which I tried to make look old by using Kodak b+w Infrared film.

In 2003 I went to watch some rehearsals of Ballet BC and I was transfixed by a dancer who moved like no other. She was slow and languid and darkly beautiful. She had a wonderful French accent when she spoke English. Her name was Sandrine Cassini. I finally was able to photograph her in 2004 in my studio where she posed as an adult Marie Van Goethem. After all Cassini had danced with the Paris Opera Ballet. She had it in the blood.

I took Rebecca and Lauren to any performance that Cassini danced in and we would go backstage so that the girls would meet her. It was a few years later that Cassini (who had left Ballet BC in 2005) returned with the Alberta Ballet as the Sugar Plum Fairy. We went to a performance and then had crepes with Cassini at a creperie on Robson. It was my purpose to transfer a bit of Cassini’s Degas into Rebecca who at the time was keen at dancing at the Arts Umbrella. She has stopped dancing and this has saddened me. Lauren, 7, has started at Arts Umbrella a week back. Perhaps her enthusiasm might rub off on Rebecca.



Or a little of that Degas ballerina blood might have seeped into Lauren at the creperie. Who knows, whichever way I look at it, the ghost of the little ballerina lives on even in the book that Rebecca is so enjoying in sharing with her grandmother.

My only excuse for the poor quality of the last picture is that I used Rebecca's first digital camera. I am sure that if Rebecca had taken it, she would have succeeded in snapping a much better one!

Monday, September 21, 2009


Today I picked up Rebecca and Lauren at school and brought them home for a middle afternoon lunch. I then made dinner for them before we took them home around 8:30. I sat down in my psychiatric couch and told Rebecca that with my Argentine friend Juan Manuel Sanchez gone to Buenos Aires for good and with the recent death of my friend Abraham Rogatnick I need someone with whom I can have an intellectual relationship. I further told her that I needed company to go to dance, theatre and music. “So when I ask you to accompany me to the Friday concerts of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra at St. James Anglican I am not doing this to push culture down your throat but to accompany me as a friend.” I hope this tack works.

The afternoon was a glorious fall afternoon. The little girls played in the garden. Rebecca showed Lauren some of my potted hostas that are in obscure corners. They fed the fish in the pond. I cut some rose hips and scanned them with yesterday’s blooms of Rosa ‘William Shakespeare 2000’. The name may not be as pleasant sounding as Rosa ‘William Shakespeare’ is just as lovely a rose but it is difficult to grow. David Austin removed it from his catalogue. I keep it in my garden and it grows pretty well. It has shut down until next year. The improved one is still going strong so I am now convinced that it is really a very good plant. The hips you see here are from three plants. The single and large light red one, bottom right, is from Rosa ‘Pink Meidiland’. Higher up on the right are the hips from Rosa ‘Complicata’. The bright red ones on the bottom left are from the species rose, Rosa glauca.

On the top right of the scan you can see the handywork of the leaf cutter bee. The leaves are also beginning to lose their colour as the season progresses and the plants wind down. Some rose blooms, particularly the multi-petaled ones like 'St Swithun' and 'Brother Cadfael' will not open. But 'William Shakespeare 2000' seems to be impervious to it all.

Sunday, September 20, 2009



I must admit now that I have never read any books by either Margaret Drabble or Joyce Carol Oates. Having read a few good reviews of the former’s latest, The Pattern in the Carpet - A Personal History with Jigsaws I might just succumb and correct my omission. But I don’t think I will read anything by Joyce Carol Oates quite yet.

Before the internet and search engines I was flummoxed consistently by people (that it happened more than once is outrageously unique) who asked me the name of Sancho Panza’s donkey. I finally bit the bullet and read the famous work by Miguel Cervantes Saavedra to find out. Not having read Don Quijote was much more grievous an omission than than ignoring Joyce Carol Oates’s works. To my surprise and disappointment I learned that Sancho never gave his ass a name. He called it rucio which is Spanish means dappled gray as he did not want to call him ass.

If there is any purpose in the above it has all to do with the reading of classics and its apparent infrequency as the 21st century “progresses”.



In yesterday’s blog I wrote of the idyllic day it was and how it ended with a terrific film based on a memoir by Gerald Durrell. I must add here that I took out two films. The first one was the Jonathan Miller 1966 film for the BBC, Alice in Wonderland. The BBC had begun a series called The Wednesday Play in 1964 which gave directors lots of latitude and freedom. This film, in stark b+w and a most serious Alice was as strange to my family as was my first viewing of Orson Welles’s 1962 The Trial based on the Kafka story. This Alice in Wonderland was unsettling and when I saw my little girls stare at me I stopped play.

But today I saw it on my own and enjoyed it, although I must agree with the critics who said there were many moments of pure boredom in spite of performances by Peter Sellers, Michael Redgrave, Leo McKern, John Gielgud, Malcolm Muggeridge and Peter Cook as the mad hatter. Rebecca and Hilary argued that the dialogue was not familiar. I checked with my Oxford University Press edition and verified that the film was only condensed but dialogue was not changed.



The film put me into thought for the rest of the afternoon and I gave Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland a new read. It was far easier than El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. I came to the conclusion that most film adaptations (and children’s books) of Lewis Carroll’s story have been dumbed down, softened and made into the cartoons they mostly are.

As I read the introduction I thought of Saturday's expedition to VanDusen with Rosemary, Rebecca and Lauren. In that introduction there is is an account by Charles Ludwidge Dodgson’s (Lewis Carroll) friend Robinson Duckworth, Fellow of Trinity on their trip up the Thames from Oxford to Godstow with the three Liddell sisters, Edith, 8, Alice, 10 and Lorina, 3.

The story was actually composed and spoken over my shoulder for the benefit of Alice Liddell. [He rowed stroke and Dodgson rowed bow]. I remember turning round and saying: ‘Dodgson, is this an extemporary romance of yours?’ And he replied: ‘Yes, I am inventing as we go along.’ I also remember how, when we had conducted the three children back to the Deanery, Alice said, as she bade us good-night, ‘Oh, Mr. Dodgson, I wish you would write out Alice’s Adventures for me! He said he would try, and he afterwards told me the he sat up nearly the whole night, committing to a manuscript his recollections of the drolleries with which he had enlivened the afternoon.

Suddenly while going to VanDusen was certainly not going up the Thames Rebecca and Lauren plus my wife Rosemary became the three girls I entertained.



As I watched the sun go down on our fall garden today I recalled the last two pages of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

So Alice got up and ran off thinking while she ran, as well as she might, what a wonderful dream it had been. But her sister sat still just as she left her, leaning her head on her hand, watching the setting sun, and thinking of little Alice and all her wonderful Adventures, till she, too began dreaming after a fashion, and this was her dream:-

…Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago; and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days.

Saturday, September 19, 2009



Theodore Stephanides: Who was it who said, "If you can control your family, you've gone terribly wrong somewhere"?
Mother: Aristotle?
Theodore Stephanides: No.
Mother: Was it me?
Theodore Stephanides: Yes.
From My Family and Other Animals, Masterpiece Theatre 2005


Some days, these days, can be melancholy ones. But today’s was one of those days were Rebecca managed to say, “When I made like I was going to push Aby (my wife Rosemary) into the VanDusen pond in her wheelchair she actually smiled after!” Rebecca and I took turns in pushing (I pushed uphill!) Rosemary during our visit to VanDusen. The girls did cartwheels on the Great Lawn and I took some pictures of them with the big camera on a tripod that I lugged around with pleasure. We had our little fits, our little fights but we arrived home happy.

Lauren waited outside the front gate for her mother to appear at the end of the block as I got the meal ready. Dessert was special as I combined a strawberry Jell-O (one layer) with strawberry mousse on top.



It was last week that Hilary brought Hitchcock’s 1954 film Dial M For Murder with Ray Milland and Grace Kelly. In spite of Grace Kelly the plot was much too convoluted and complex for Lauren to figure out and she became bored. “Papi,” Hilary told me, “If we are going to see a movie get one that Lauren can enjoy.” As difficult as that sounds, if one considers that not only do we want to please the 7 year-old girl but also ourselves, it was a simple task. I went to Videomatica to the Australian/New Zealand/British section and I found many films that would have satisfied us all. I picked the 2005 Masterpiece Theatre production My Family and Other Animals based on the autobiographical work of naturalist Gerald Durrell who happened to be the brother of Lawrence Durrell one of my favourite authors. The film was hilarious and it pleased us all. Lauren laughed a lot.

Traditionally I like to cut roses for Saturday’s dinner table. The scan you see above is of the roses that made up the arrangement of today’s table. For me they represent the perfect end of a perfect day.

Friday, September 18, 2009


I left my mostly empty studio yesterday and I have been reflecting on how I got there. It really boils down to two women, Frances and Marlene Cohen.

It was 1975 and I was trudging at my Tilden-Rent-A-Car job. The manager was a sexist pig before they were identified with the animal. I had to listen to his jokes or such questionable comments as wanting to sniff the bicycle seats ridden by beautiful girls (in 1975 girls were girls and not women). I could not sit down and read on virtually dead winter Sunday afternoons. If the manager caught me reading, instead of looking out of the window on Alberni Street to will clients to come in and rent cars he would make me wash windows or file dead files.

In desperation I decided to take stroke improvement classes at the nearby YMCA. It was there that I met a beautiful French Canadian girl who asked me to photograph her as soon as she found out I wanted to be a photographer. I did not know she worked at Holt Renfrew. I did not know she put my colour pictures of her (alas I may have uncharacteristically thrown her pictures away) in the expensive frames of the gift department where she worked.

It seems that Marlene Cohen (of Army & Navy fortune) came in one day and saw the pictures and noticed the likeness to the clerk that was attending her. In short order Marlene called me and I photographed her( picture above). She referred me to her sister-in-law Frances Cohen and I ended up taking pictures of the whole Cohen clan. Frances gave me her card to take to Vancouver Magazine’s Fashion Editor, Gabriel Levy. Levy looked at my portraits and told me I had no fashion sense but that I had possibilities as a portrait photographer. He gave me his card to take to Vancouver Magazine art director Rick Staehling. And that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship with a very good magazine and my career as a magazine photographer.

Thursday, September 17, 2009



One of the last remaining items in my now almost empty studio is a large Manfrotto boom. It is a tall light stand from which one can suspend a light and point it downwards to get a 30/40s Hollywood look when using a precise and controlled light that has a limited dispersal. It was the boom that Marlene Dietrich demanded of her film directors once she liked how she looked in the publicity stills that George Hurrell took of her. I purchased the boom around 1983 from departing (for Toronto) photographer Brent Daniels. The boom has other uses. It makes a very good hair light that can be pointed exactly where you want it because there is a double hand crank system with which you can control the position of the light. Manfrotto booms are expensive. You need a large studio to use them. It would be difficult for me to sell it and get a good price for it. I will keep it.


But the boom, all alone in my studio, made me think of my career as one of simplicity, complexity and back to simplicity. It was simplicity, a couple of 35mm cameras and a little flash unit that started me in business in 1976. By 1980 I had purchased some powerful (for then) Ascor studio flash units and a medium format Mamiya RB-67. Except for buying another couple of Mamiyas (one for parts and one as backup) my equipment is virtually the same today. I did buy a focusing spotlight to supplement my Ascor Fresnel spot. But my three softboxes (a small one, a medium one and a very large one) are 80s vintage. I stopped using umbrellas then. I have always preferred the ability of softboxes in giving me a more directional lighting than the wider spreading umbrellas.



In today’s blog I want to demonstrate how the simplicity of my early years progressed to a complexity of multi lighting and the use of big sets in a big studio. When the magazine industry began to pull back in what they paid, their expectations also declined in what they wanted. The blog will finish with a photograph I took of cello player Cris Dirksen and soprano Melodi Mercredi that I took last week for this week’s Straight. I consider this a very emotionally satisfying photograph in which I used one 2 by 3 ft softbox in close proximity to a gray wall. Yet all the pictures you see here were taken by the same Mamiya and the same lenses.



It was in the photograph of belly dancer Sarita (one of the last that I took with an umbrella around 1982) where in retrospect I see what led me to last week’s double portrait. I took about 30 portraits of the beautiful Sarita in many poses. The one here is the only one I took just like that. It is all about an understanding and a moment of intimacy between photographer and subject that occurs when photographer and subject chat and get to know each other. There are no thoughts of virtuoso lighting in a large set using many lights to achieve a cutting edge look that proves the photographer knows how to use complex equipment.

It must have been around six years ago that I looked back at the Sarita picture and told myself that was the only kind of photography I wanted to do. Many who look at my pictures say I have a straight ahead and conservative style. I don’t mind the epithet even if they mean well. In fact I teach a popular course at Focal Point that is called Contemporary One Light Photography where I stress the use of that one 2x3 softbox and a gray wall.



As photographers close down their expensive studios (and this one is no different) I can see that even the simplicity of my “conservative” style is unusual in its scarcity. The one light (no softbox or umbrella) attached to an expensive digital Canon or Nikon is the style of the day. Marlene Dietrich would refuse to be photographed by this sort of light. If George Hurrell were around, he, too, would close down his studio!

My wife Rosemary urges me to buy a digital single lens reflex camera to become competitive. I am unable to explain that the camera is not the issue. The issue is the lighting and the approach one takes with one’s subjects. My sort of lighting and my approach is not viable now. I jokingly say it is obsolete. I only think that it is in dormancy and it will come back as soon as straight ahead lighting begins to bore.



Rosemary urges me to buy a digital single lens reflex camera so that I can “better” instruct my students at Focal Point and at Van Arts. I try to explain that I teach photography. I teach about my approach to portraiture, editorial and nude photography. I don’t teach how to use cameras. It is not about equipment as such. It is about a simplicity that becomes ever more complex and then it retreats and calms down to a satisfying simplicity. This is where I am now. But I will keep that boom. One never knows what time will bring!

Picture 1: Doug Bennett from the band Doug and the Slugs with Randy Rampage (DOA) up in the air. I cannot remember the name of the ecdysiast now. I took this photograph in 1985. I had no assistants even though I had to monitor two smoke machines. The light on the top right is the boom.

Picture 2: The lead singer of Moev (after Madeleine Morris left the band. Have a look at Morris under a boom in adjacent blog below.) I do not remember her name. I took this picture in 1985 and I would not be able to duplicate it if I tried. I did use a focusing spot light and many gels.

Picture 3: Kate Davitt, model, smoking. I took this in 1984. I used a boom spotlight pointing down and a second spotlight across her face. The boom spotlight acted as a back light so that the smoke can be seen. I took this in the huge studio I had on Hamilton Street in the not yet fashionable Yaletown.

Picture 4: Carla Temple, body builder. I used complex lighting and sets that I borrowed from the CBC. They had them in their Burnaby warhouse so I had to manhandle them on to a truck with the help of Vancouver Magazine writer Les Wiseman and editor Malcolm Parry. I took this in 1984. Art Director Chris Dahl, dispatched me with a, "Take some heroic pictures of her." Malcolm Parry added, "Make sure they wear very little."

Picture 5: Sarita. Perhaps 1983. I used an umbrella but this picture is what my style has become now even though I opt for a small 2x3 ft softbox. It was here that I temporarily (!) forgot about wanting to impress people with my complex lighting schemes that never seemed to reach the soul of my subjects.

Picture 6: I took this last week. On the left that's cello player Cris Derksen and on the right opera soprano Melodi Mercredi.

The styles above are all over the map but all taken with the same camera. A camera that has elements that are 35 years old. I exchange parts from the two other identical Mamiyas I have so that the one camera I use operates smoothly. I wonder if anybody will be using their modern cameras beyond a couple of years. The money these photographers save by not buying film is spent upgrading equipment and software that does not last beyond a couple of years. Will it ever get simple again?

Boom Shots

Lady Windermere under the boom

Karen Campbell under the boom

Crystal Pite under the boom