Saturday, November 20, 2010


Yesterday was a disappointing day. The girls arrived at around 12:30 and I had prepared my ring flash to take some portraits of Rebecca. I had never used the ring flash with either of the girls. It was last week that I photographed Lauren in my studio living room with plush toys that were given to her mother and aunt at least 39 years ago. I thought that a ring flash with some striking makeup and jewelry might suit Rebecca fine this week. I thought that the taking of pictures was something that we shared and that Rebecca enjoyed. As long as I take pictures of such an excellent model (her younger sister is quickly making up for lost time) I can call myself a photographer since such few assignments come my way these days.


But I was wrong on all counts and my granddaughter said she was tired of being photographed every Saturday (not quite the case). And so, I let it go but not without extreme disappointment and a touch of melancholy. I put my equipment away.

Filing, good filing, has kept this blog alive as anything I may want to write about can always be matched with images that I can find in my files. The filing of my photographs is something my eldest daughter began at least 15 years ago and it has served me well. But there are still boxes of stuff I have not gotten to and the re-filing of it can be an onerous task as I sometimes do not remember the names of the people involved or a relevant name for their filing.

Feeling blue and cold (we had gone for a walk to the park where both my granddaughters had thrown snowballs my way) I went to the basement through some of those yet to be filed boxes full of photographs, negative and slides.



Here you see some of my discoveries. The colour pictures o Jackie Coleman, a CBC jazz dancer of the late 70s and early 80s I had lost since 2003 when I had written an article for the Vancouver Sun and for the then CBC Arts Web Page (it is so strange that the essay is still up here on the web) for which I was a columnist. In the Vancouver Sun article the folks at the Sun had used my pictures of Coleman. Those pictures vanished and every time I looked for them I drew a blank. So here they are an in a couple of them you can see Jeff Hyslop. The pictures were taken during the taping of a show (late 70s) that featured Leon Bibb and was about the history of the blues.

In that pile of pictures I found the one of my eldest daughter Alexandra (she must have been 8 here) posing with the Royal Hudson locomotive behind her. Then there is the picture of Paul Wilson Brown and me at the Marble Arch. I found two, but the other one shows much too much of one my favourite dancers called Salem. Here there is less of her even though there I am with my eyes about to close.



And envelope labeled, Young Girl With Horse, I know I took for the Straight long ago. There is no other name, reference or date for these pictures which I find lovely. It is my hope that someone who reads this blog might know who the girl is so that some copies of these pictures might go her way.



The last batch of pictures I look with sadness as I found these youngsters on the beach of Punta del Este, Uruguay in the late 89s when Mark Budgen and I were assigned by Toronto based magazine Vista to do pieces on Argentina and Uruguay. I am sad when I look at these pictures because I know that the fresh look of youth of this bunch must by now be almost gone and worse of all unnamed as I never wrote their names down. There is a loneliness in their expression that haunts me, perhaps more so because of these cold and gloomy days of Vancouver Novembers.