Saturday, August 18, 2012

Nicole Steen

Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology
Don't know much about a science book
Don't know much about the French I took

But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me too
What a wonderful world this would be

Don't know much about geography
Don't know much trigonometry
Don't know much about algebra
Don't know what a slide rule is for

But I do know that one and one is two
And if this one could be with you
What a wonderful world this would be

Now I don't claim to be an "A" student
But I'm trying to be
So maybe by being an "A" student baby
I can win your love for me

Don't know much about history
Don't know much biology
Don't know much about a science book
Don't know much about the French I took

But I do know that I love you
And I know that if you love me too
What a wonderful world this would be
Sam Cooke




I do think I know a bit about history, geography, biology. But I must admit that my French consists of three or four words. Of the so-called Lowbrow art faction I know absolutely nothing except that its principal protagonist in Vancouver, 12 Midnite, is a pleasant chap with a penchant for painting flames on matt black 1950 Chevys.

I have photographed 12 Midnite at least three times through the years. On one of the occasions I came up with the idea of doing a collaborative illustration for his interview in the Georgia Straight. I was rather pleased except I must note that art directors, for reasons unknown to me, do not like to attribute these illustrations to more than one person. My constant needling to make sure that the double credit is given has not made me friends.



On another assignment perhaps only six years ago I was assigned to photograph Lowbrow artist Nicole Steen. I concocted a scheme using the then still available Polaroid b+w Instant Print Film that would involve some fun collaboration.

It was not to be. The folks (and in particular the art director) of the publication that had hired me said that my stuff was unusable. I was not paid and a handout picture for the exhibition (at the then Tart Gallery) was used instead.



I did not know quite then but this marked a new trend in Vancouver in which illustrations for magazines and newspapers became conventional and in my opinion boring.

Art directors like to design covers for their publication in which their use of typography (a dying art it seems) and layout design trumps any photograph. A good photograph (beyond just being in focus and properly exposed) might compete with the overall design. So those photographic images are kept conventional.



At a recent Western Magazine Award presentation I noticed that one art director won a best layout award for simply coming up with the brilliant “new” idea of running a photograph for a business article as a full-page vertical bleed.

I think I can figure it out now. Lowbrow art may just be much too smart. But then how would I know? I am just a dumb photographer.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Today I had a most pleasant early afternoon in the garden. I was visited by director/actor Sarah Rodgers and her daughter Poppy. I was to attempt to photograph them together wearing the red shawl. The photograph will make a pair with Rodgers’s good friend director  Johnna Wright and her son Sascha.

The photograph (what you see here is a Fuji Instant 3000 ISO b+w print and the reversed negative. I am still not 100% in figuring out why the negative manifests the Sabatier Effect (it looks solarized). It has nothing to do with over or under exposure so it might be related to the fact that I wait 30 seconds instead of the recommended 15 seconds before I peel it. Or it could be my heavy duty hot air drying (a hair dryer) to make sure the emulsion on the negative is bone dry as do not want it to stick to the glass of my scanner’s flatbed.

The picture was a lot easier to take than we thought. Poppy came into the house and noticed Rosemary’s cat, Casi-Casi who is a gentle soul. He did not move in the least when Poppy approached him. She charmed her. When I was taking the portraits I gave Poppy my best cat noise imitation (I am very good). The Ektachrome 100G will have to wait until Rodgers writes her essay. I think I might suspect what will be in her essay. As she came in she told me that she was wearing her mother’s dress, the only one that she has left of her mother’s former wardrobe.



Rosemary kept Poppy entertained while Rodgers and I munched on watermelon in the garden and discussed the theatre scene in Vancouver. Rodgers is so busy directing that she welcomes acting jobs once in a while as they seem to be vacations.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Today I went to a Vancouver institution (cash only) that in a token effort to modernize now accepts debit cards. It is called Dressew Supply and it is on 337 West Hastings. I have been there often through the years but of late I had no reason to go.


In the 80s for many of my glamour photographs for Vancouver Magazine I would buy bolts of very nice satin. My secret weapon was my faithful makeup artist, Inga Vollmer who with pins here and there could manufacture dresses (that revealed just enough) in a few minutes.

It was always an adventure to go to Dressew during the boom in strip parlours in Vancouver. Lusty Leanne had promoted the custom of dancing on the exotic dancing bar stages on some sort of rug. This was the third phase of the dancer’s show when she would take it all off and do legwork on her back or stomach. Dancers (I knew many of them) would buy up al the fake leopard rugs they could find plus stuff to make their outfits.

Today I went to Dressew in search of a fabric called Dauphine. I am having my art deco desk lamp shade re-covered. This is the second time. My Rosemary wanted the textured strip ridge (cut in a bias) for this but the Victoria Lampshade Shop, 103-1926 4th Ave did not have that fabric and suggested I try Dressew. The Victoria Lampshade Shop is the last place left (they have a store in Victoria) where you can have lampshades re-covered. People now buy the whole lamps and when the shades look bad they buy a new lamp. Those days of finding and choosing from a myriad of lampshade stock at Sears, the Bay or Eaton’s are gone.

Rosemary at KOA in Mexico circa 1970

They did not have dauphine at Dressew but I found a very nice textured off-white silk that will do the job. I noticed many beautiful young women with very dark and precise bangs. They had very white faces and I know that at least a few of them were burlesque artists in search of inspiration for their costumes.

When I got home I became nostalgic for the idea of cloth, sewing, needles, etc. In some way that sort of thing has been part of my life since I can remember. I used to thread needles for my grandmother and mother.

Camile & Saffron Henderson satin from Dressew haute couture Inga Vollmer

By the time I was 15 I had learned to fry eggs and sew buttons. When I complained to my mother that she had broken the egg yolks of my fried eggs and told her I would not eat them, she informed that hence I would have to fry them myself to my satisfaction. Nagging her to sew a button or hem a pair of jeans led to the same reaction, “You do it.”

I was thinking about this only last week when we were talking about the verb to baste and I brought up the topic that it did not only involve turkeys. I drew a blank with everybody except Rosemary.

When I hem my jeans I baste them with a stapler. My grandmother would not have been horrified as she was practical.

In the picture of Rosemary here sunning herself in a KOA pool somewhere in Mexico you can see that she is not wearing a proper bathing suit. She did not own one. We then embarked on the project of making her a black latex bikini (alas I cannot find a picture of her wearing it). This was around 1970. I went to the Palacio de Hierro, a very good chain of Mexico City department store and bought a bra (Rosemary’s size) and a pair of low cut panties.

At home I carefully took those apart using small nail scissors and a razor. We then made a pattern with the different sections. After we went shopping for the latex, which somehow we found.

Then Rosemary, by hand, put a black latex bikini together. I do remember that the fittings became a terrible distraction which ended with long and languorous siestas.

The lamp will be fixed soon. Few of you might know that the lamp is very important for my plant scanning. I have thin, green bamboo stakes (the garden variety) which I clamp to the top of the lamp and then move the lamp near the scanner flatbed glass. I suspend roses and other plants from the tip of the bamboo over the glass so that the rose almost touches the glass.

the art deco lamp, left centre, Yuliya Kate at my computer

Wednesday, August 15, 2012



 Death is a cure for all diseases. Sir Thomas Browne, 1605-1682


Today I received a pleasant call from a staffer of the Vancouver Province. He told me that the Province was going to run a piece (a letter to the Province) by former Vancouver Sun columnist Paul St. Pierre. His letter was about the fact that he (St. Pierre) believed Canada was sliding into a police state. It seems that yesterday a man was paddling down a river in his canoe (not far from a Harper picnic). He was stopped by police, his canoe was taken apart and a knife the man always carried was confiscated. The man was told to stay away and paddle in some other direction. No mention was made if the canoe at that point could float.

I told the Province man, that yes he could use my photograph of Paul St. Pierre but that the Province would have to pay me a token fee as I did not give my photographs away.

After that the man told me he would call me back if they could rustle up some money. I felt guilty but I thought that in matters of principle I had taken the high road.

The article appeared today (I am writing this today Thursday) minus my picture. The picture used was a good one but I must subjectively state here that my picture is a lot better. If every individual photographer can have the fortitude to believe that his/her picture is better we still have a chance to impose on our 21st century a change on the present philosophy that the best price is free.






Death has been in my mind in the last couple of weeks. First I read Julian Barnes's
nothing to be frightened of and last night I finished Reginald Hill's A Cure for All Diseases. The previous Hill novel also featuring Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel was called Death Comes for the Fat Man. I have a friend who is rapidly divesting himself of his posessions and wants to be able to die with as little as he came into this world 86 years ago - nothing.

I was shocked then to open my Vancouver Sun this morning and see Paul St. Pierre's essay A Voice from the Grave's Edge. It is a rant but I considered a few things before I would dismiss it. And of course I didn't dismiss it. I had met Paul St. Pierre in November 1993 when I photographed him for an article in the Globe & Mail. St. Pierre had come to my house for his portrait session. We talked about our fondness for Mexico and our admiration for the Mexican concept of death - they live with death and don't avoid it. So I photographed St. Pierre (above, left) with a Mexican pottery version of the Last Supper.

Paul St. Pierre is 86-years old and obviously somebody in the Vancouver Sun wrote the headline for his piece for some reason. I sent an email to Malcolm Parry to see if he could confirm one way or another St. Pierre's situation. Mac's answer was typical:

I took him at his word.
Mac

I hope the folks at the Vancouver Sun will forgive me for putting here the whole essay. I know that if I link it the link will disappear after a few weeks or months. Here is Paul St. Pierre's essay. If we are not to forget that the man is 86 and that at one time we showed a large measure of respect to those older than we are, you just might understand that there is some good sense under the obvious rant. Bless him.


A VOICE FROM THE GRAVE'S EDGE
Paul St. Pierre
Special to the Sun

Monday, November 10, 2008

As life's end nears, two unpaid debts remain to trouble me. One is to my mother, who is not here to be paid, and the other is to my native land, which provided me a good life.

This is a payment, at least a token payment, to my country. Few will read all this and fewer will heed. When Dwight D. Eisenhower left office he warned the Americans about the sinister power of the military-industrial complex. Had he been heeded, millions of lives would have been saved or made better, but nobody paid much attention. He was just an old president pegging out. Why listen?
So why should you listen to an old man on the way out, who can only claim to have been a fair newspaperman, a so-so politician, a Western-only novelist and a man no better than average as a wing shot? That's all right. This is not written for a lot of people but for those who are, at this moment, few. If this message reaches only one in 10,000 readers it was worth it.

Listen, I speak to you in the head, peoples. Our Canada is now very close to a condition in which everything that is not compulsory is forbidden. We have become prisoners of the state. Like modern jail prisoners, all our needs for balanced diet, climate-controlled shelter, approved and tested medication, mental health counselling, higher education, suitable entertainment, grief counselling and consensual safe sex are available free. The inmate lacks only freedom itself.
When I was young, Canadians were born almost free; now we are born in manacles of silk and gold.

To the recent generations, this is hyperbole. I understand that. I also understand that young people cannot be expected to miss freedom. How can you miss what you never had? But a few of the old may remember and a few of the young might feel the tug of curiosity. I hope so.
Scarcely a day passes when our rulers do not devise some new law or regulation having the force of law, complete with fines and prison penalties. No one knows how many there are. Even the rulers couldn't find the number when they tried a few years ago. Suffice to say there are enough that everyone is a criminal now.

Here and there a free voice rings out. The Law Reform Commission of Canada quoted, in its first report, the old Roman senator, Cato: "The more the laws, the more the criminals." Even half a century ago, the commission recognized that there were already so many laws that nobody could know more than a few of them and that whether or not you are hauled into court to answer for a crime is not so much a matter of justice but a bureaucratic decision as to whether it seems productive to prosecute.
Among recent decisions we have accepted:

1. Our Supreme Court, repeating George Orwell, ruled that although all Canadians are equal before the law, some are more equal than others.

2. Thought Police arrived. They invent the crime which they investigate, invent the trial procedures and invent the penalties. Careers and lives have been ruined. Many more will be. Who now remembers that extraordinary woman, Queen Elizabeth I, who said it was not the business of the state to "pry into men's souls."

3. In the past 20 years we began a changeover from the British system of justice, in which every man is innocent until proven guilty, to the continental European system, often called the Napoleonic Code, in which the state obliges the citizen to prove innocence of anything the state may choose to suspect. A sample: If you have $10,001 in your pocket our rulers may simply take it and you will never get it back unless and until you prove you obtained it in a way the rulers consider suitable. In 2001 we got a gun control law under which citizens can be obliged to give evidence not only against their own family but also against themselves. Nobody seemed to much care. In Britain an ASBO (Anti-Social Behaviour Order) may commit some pranksome juvenile to prison, even though old British Common Law could not. In the United States you can be put in a cage for five or six years and never allowed to see a lawyer or learn what the charge against you is.

4. By the beginning of this millennium the shape of things to come was clear for those many Canadians, almost all of us, indeed, whose ancestors fled the Old World seeking freedom. Arbitrary rule, Star Chamber courts, class distinction, the creation of a courtier class who have almost exclusive access to the ears of the rulers, and finally the deadly dreary cult of political correctness.

5. Already ordinary people have learned to watch their tongues. This piece would be far more open and more honest were it not for the fear that some Oldspeak or Badthink would prevent it ever being printed. We are all individuals but because of our very individualism, we have permitted tyranny. Individualism does not nourish quick or concerted actions. We individuals drifted lazily into tyranny, accepting the view that the common people can never behave decently unless controlled by carrots and whips. James Madison, a framer of the U.S. Constitution, foresaw it. Americans, he said, could be depended upon to reject a tyrant who came against them bloody sword in hand, but they might surrender freedoms, one by one, to people who assured them it was for their own good. That is exactly what happened, in the United States as in Canada. The Americans try to disguise their wretched state of submission to the rulers by hooting and shrieking the word freedom, tossing firecrackers around and, most recently -- the supreme irony -- calling unconstitutional and oppressive legislation The Patriot Act. An American must bullshit. His health demands it. If he cannot bullshit a foreigner he will bullshit himself, but he has to do it.

6. There is worse. Americans now have revived practices of the Spanish Inquisition and permit their police to torture suspects to obtain appropriate "confessions." Where Americans lead, Canadians usually follow. Statism and totalitarianism, which we spent so much blood and money to fight in the Second World War and the Cold War, rise everywhere. They will keep rising until the private, secret impulse to freedom among individual men and women becomes a working majority. It will. First this majority will be silent and almost invisible. Then, overnight it will seem, it will emerge as a tempest which will sweep most of what we know today into history's garbage can, both the good and the bad. Blood will run.

Is there nothing we can do?
Of course there is, otherwise why waste this space?

1. Put no faith in any major political party. The allegedly profound philosophic differences among big parties are either trivial or imaginary. By their very nature big parties, like big newspapers, cannot lead, they can only follow what they judge to be public taste.

2. Act within small groups. You may be effective as a member of your local school board or Gladiola Society. You are unlikely to have an even detectable impact on a big political party as a voter or on a big company as an employee.

3. Soon we shall be permitted to walk around in our Canada only by carrying internal passports, a more elaborate document than the driver's licence which at present serves for control of the proletariat. What can one do? There is an answer. When internal passports become law, do as terrorists and gangsters do -- obtain more than one workable identity.

4. Try to increase the readership of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four and Animal Farm, and J.B. Priestley's Brave New World and Brave New World Revisited. If it did not violate a basic principle, I would urge these books be compulsory reading in our schools. Those were the most prescient writers of the 20th century.

5. Never forget this: Any government may lie, cheat, murder and steal, for "the public good."

6. Remember Canada is small and remember also that a big world power can never be a true friend of a small power. Read Tito.

7. Although family is a diminishing force and may continue to fade, it remains the best social organism ever known to mankind. Sacrifice for it.

8. Without losing too much sleep, join the underground economy.

9. Fight for the Internet. It may be our last, best hope. Oppose, evade or sabotage every state attempt to control it, yes, even at the cost of permitting such obvious social evils as racial bigotry or child pornography. It is the common man's strongest available instrument and will be the target of sophisticated attacks by all rulers.

10. Support the Canadian Civil Liberties Union. Future generations will see it as a lonely champion of liberty during long, dark years. When it supports a cause that you find obnoxious, trivial or dangerous, increase your donation.

11. Above all, beware of priests, particularly those persuasive ones in the evangelist movement who claim they are not priests. And if you think allegiance to one true God will solve everything, look at Northern Ireland and the Middle East and think again. Seek a world in which religion, like sex, is completely free but practised only in private. You may find it necessary to speak with the many but you can think with the few.

12. Never despair. Keep the faith. Despite Big Brother's awesome and growing power, in the still, dark and secret places of the soul, ordinary men and women retain hopes, dreams and high ethics. Out of that fathomless, still pool of the soul, freedom will emerge again, some day.
Paul St. Pierre is a former Vancouver Sun columnist and member of Parliament who lives in Fort Langley and Mexico.
© The Vancouver Sun 2008


death

more death

even more death

and even more death

I didn't think it was my prerogative to point out that Brave New World was not written by J.B. Priestly. In letters to the editor, the next day in the Vancouver Sun, this was indicated by a reader.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Facebook is a large depository of people with causes that believe that by “facebook liking” their entries, Siberian tigers will be saved from extinction or the Japanese will cease whaling. I do believe that this sort of activity does little for a positive resolution. I have a friend, a female from South America, whose particular cause (laudable) is to help find homes for stray or abandoned cats and dogs. She also believes that the shooting or in some other way of killing these poor animals is no different from the same done to children.

To agree to this one has to equate a human and a cat or dog on the same level of existence. I will not argue that nor would I get into a position of doing so.

Yesterday I finished the extraordinary non fiction book, In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson. It is an account of the story of the 1933 to 1937 tour-of-duty of the American Ambassador William Dodd (and his most interesting sexually active daughter Martha) in Berlin during the rise to power of Adolf Hitler.

Somewhere towards the end of the book (I took six more days to read it than the allotted one week given to “fast read” books so I had to pay a $6.00 fine), on page 336 I read this:


In his diary entry for Sunday, August 5, 1934, Dodd remarked upon a trait of the German people that he observed in his Leipzig days and that had persisted even under Hitler: a love for animals, in particular horses and dogs.

“At a time when nearly every German was afraid to speak a word to any but the closest friends, horses and dogs are so happy that one feels they wish to talk,” he wrote. “A woman who may report on a neighbor for disloyalty and jeopardize his life, even cause his death, takes her big kindly-looking dog in the Tiergarten for a walk. She talks to him and coddles him as she sits on the bench, and he attends to the requirements of nature.”

In Germany, Dodd had noticed, no one abused a dog, and as a consequence dogs were never fearful around men and were always plump and obviously well tended. “Only horses seem to be equally happy, never the children or the youth,” he wrote. “I often stop as I walk to my office and have a word with a pair of beautiful horses waiting while their wagon is being unloaded. They are so clean and fat and happy that one feels that they are on the point of speaking.” He called it “horse happiness” and had noticed the same phenomenon in Nuremberg and Dresden. In part, he knew, this happiness was fostered by German law, which forbade cruelty to animals and punished violators with prison, and here Dodd found a deeper irony. “At a time when hundreds of men have been put to death without trial or any sort of evidence of guilt, and when the population literally trembles with fear, animals have rights guaranteed them which men and women cannot think of expecting.” He added,” One might easily wish he were a horse!”

Monday, August 13, 2012

Ligularia dentata 'Desdemona'

Just about now our garden is showing signs of decline. Many of the perennials have bloomed and grown tall and collapsed. This is the case with our thalictrums. The digitalis, while past blooming, stays up and the dried flowers and seed stalks are a pleasant foretaste of fall.

Hosta 'Spritzer' & Hydrangea macrophylla 'Blue Wave' Scanned Fuji ISO 100 instant colur film negative peel reversed and sepia toned.

My roses are in between but show buds that will soon flower. The second flush of my roses produce blooms that will not be as big and of course my gallicas bloomed only once and are now growing tall and long so I have to prune them now.

The hostas still look good even though I can spot some minor slug damage. The hydrangeas are all in bloom. Hydrangea aspera, H. aspera ‘Villosa’ and H. aspera var. Sargentiana are a bit past and the flowers are fading. Hydrangea quercifolia (Oak Leaf Hydrangea) is in full bloom and in a few days when the pollen sets they will smell of strong sweet honey.

Fuji 100 ISO Instant Colour Film, scanned print Pinhole lens cap, exposure three minutes

As the garden fades a bit Rosemary and I appreciate the warm yellow/orange of the flowers of Ligularia dentata ‘Desdemona’. These plants are faithful and easy to grow as long as they get watered often. The warm yellow is a happy colour in the garden when our thoughts are now shifting to the idea that fall will come soon and we have to move plants and re-think some areas.

What I do not look forward to is the pruning of our very long laurel hedge. My arthritis prevents me from using my hand hedge clippers and even the electric ones might be a tough on my joints. I am going to look into renting some gas powered clippers.

I spent some of today monkeying around with my Polaroid back and the pinhole body cap of my Mamiya. The pictures are decidedly unsharp and perhaps I should leave the idea. In the past I found that pinhole camera pictures of the undraped woman were quite attractive. Plants, it would seem must be on the sharp side.

Sunday, August 12, 2012





Most of my life I have been fascinated and attracted to beauty. Sometime in the early 60s my artistically inclined grandmother, Lolita and I went to an opening in Mexico City by a young Filipino painter whose name has been erased by time. My grandmother and I stared at a big painting that featured a pair of Mexican huaraches (the kind that have cut car tires as soles). My grandmother called on the artist to explain why he would paint something so ugly. The painter with a smile on his face said to her, “Ah, but the beauty of ugliness.” My grandmother laughed. And I never forgot as to this day I would have rarely have agreed with the Filipino artist.

In 1951 I saw Henry King’s 1949 film Prince of Foxes based on the novel of the same name written by Samuel Shellabarger. This movie left a lasting impression on me as it featured a horrendous (to my young eyes) scene where a castle under siege defends itself by pouring boiling oil on the army attempting to scale the walls in long wooden ladder. The villain, Cesare Borgia is played by Orson Welles who commands that our hero, the swashbuckling swordsman/artist played by Tyrone Power to be executed. His fate is somehow spared when the villainous looking (but not so) Mario Belli played by Everett Sloane convinces that better than death Tyrone Power be rendered blind and thus thwarting him to hell on earth because of his artistic tendencies. Sloane picks some black grapes from a bowl (unseen) and goes to Power, who has been tortured, and tells him to scream when he gets his hands near Power’s eyes. Sloane then makes it seem he is gouging out Power’s eyes while simultaneously squeezing on the grapes!



But the scene that brings to mind the huarache painting happens earlier in the film when Sloane attempts to kill (ordered to do so by Welles). Powers overcomes the man and when he is about to dispatch him with his sword sees Sloane’s face. He says something like, “With a face as ugly as that I cannot kill you. I must paint you.”




I have never been tempted to photograph ugly people because they are ugly. If I must do so by assignment or by commission I always do my best to make them look the best I can in as flattering a light as I can muster. I have never been tempted to photograph garbage or show the poverty of a country when I can concentrate on the cathedrals and the gardens. There is enough ugliness in our world as it is, and I am never in a mood to glorify it.



Which brings me to the purpose of today’s blog which is to glorify beauty. In this case it is the beauty of a woman called Quilla who has a beauty unique to her. But then I must think that beauty is always unique to the person unless it is of the current crop of starlet/celebrities (they of exquisite blandness) that instead of getting voice lessons or acting classes choose to change their names to some sort of Kabalarian philosophy (the Hollywood branch) that states that names containing the letter Q(Quilla's Q is purely coincidental)  are advantageous in helping achieve fame .

I first met Quilla as a model at Focal Point and she quickly became our favourite. But of late she has not been our model as she decided to study journalism and photography in a Victoria school. She is also one mean and very good tree planter. Currently she holds a job as a reporter/photographer for a Saskatchewan newspaper.

She was in town briefly a few days ago and Quilla kindly accepted my request that she pose with my mother’s red shawl. I took some pictures, too, sitting here at the very place where I am writing this.

I have a very good reason for having chosen to photograph her by the computer. I have done so twice with Yuliya Kate, and would you know that both of them posed once, together, for my class at Focal Point.


This large city is not as large as some of us think. Those in my red shawl series by the virtue that I know them all will sooner or later have something in common. So Yuliya and Quilla who posed together at Focal Point and posed by my computer will now be joined by being part of the red shawl series.

As for Quilla's face it is far removed from that huarache painting. And yet while I have met and photographed so many beautiful women, what is it about Quilla's face that is decidedly different? Some of you will never know as part of the package has to include the rest of her. My photography can do no justice to that.