Saturday, December 15, 2012

Raúl Guerrero Montemayor & friend

On Sunday I am off to Mexico City to visit my extremely ill friend, Raúl Guerrero Montemayor. He has prostate cancer and he is going to be 86 on Sunday.

Because my father left our house in Buenos Aires when I was 8, I was left without a father. In spite of everything I always had a very soft spot in my heart for him and when we reunited in Buenos Aires when I was 21 it was a happy occasion.

Shelley Humphrey

Through the years I have had a slew of very good surrogate fathers. The Brothers of Holy Cross in Austin, Texas were all multi-faceted fathers and offered a variety of attention and help. I love them all including the very much alive Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. who I manage to hug in person at least once a year.

My cousin Roberto Miranda when he saw I was squandering my future in my early 20s asked me what I needed in order to become a photographer. With his American Express Card we went to American Photo Supply on Calle Madero in Mexico City and he bought all I needed to process and print b+w film. Without him I would have never become a photographer.

And then there was Raúl Guerrero Montemayor. When I returned to Mexico from my military service in Argentina I was floundering and confused. He invited me to stay with him in his apartment on Río Elba in the not-quite-yet fashionable Zona Rosa in Mexico City. He gave me a crash course on teaching English as a second language (the Berlitz method) and got me a job which paid well.

Guerrero decided I needed to be culturally improved and took me to see European films (¡Monica Vitti!! ¡ay, ay!), concerts and in numerous coffee shop outings taught me about literature and the culture of his favourite cities, Paris, Vienna and Budapest. Through him I met a Hungarian baroness, Filipino diplomats, French jazz players and quite a few writers and poets. It was during this period that I met my Rosemary Healey and Guerrero was a witness at our wedding. A few years later he was the godfather of our youngest daughter Hilary (the mother of Rebecca and Lauren).

Nonong Quezon

I must see him and no matter what he might look like at this stage of his life I know we will both smile. While going through my files of the period I found these pictures of this blonde girl. I cannot remember anything about her except that I photographed her in the staircase in Guerrero’s apartment that led to the loft where my room was. In those days women and men came and went into that apartment that was a bohemian one. We were living, by then the post English hip invasion and this girl reminded me of Twiggy and of the films like Darling with Julie Christie.

For the pictures I used Kodak Tri-X, Agfa IFF and Ilford HP-5. I processed the negatives but was unable to print them until a bit later when I finally obtained my darkroom with the help of my cousin, Roberto Miranda. The soft focus effect I achieved by removing (unscrewing) the front element of a Komura 85mm F-1.8 lens.

The beautiful Filipino woman with Raúl is another blank in my memory. The close cropped pictures are of a Filipino friend of Guerrero’s, Nonong Quezon who was the son of the first president of the Philippines, Manuel L. Quezon. The young man with the cigarette was another Filipino friend. One morning he and I had a competition. We each had a bowl of cornflakes. I had mine with a spoon and he with a chopsticks. I lost as he finished them all in a few slurps and swoops. Andrew Taylor, the man with the pipe was and is my Yorkshire born friend. He was the one who probably took the snap of Rosemary and me. Shelley Humphrey is my first cousin.

Andrew Taylor, Esquire

Rosemary & Alex

Nonong's friend

Mystery blonde

 
     

Friday, December 14, 2012

My Mother's Red Shawl - El Rebozo Colorado
Alexandra Waterhouse-Hayward - Maestra





El rebozo rojo lo recuerdo desde mi infancia. En Navidad siempre ha tenido el prestigio de adornar la base del árbol. Recuerdo que cuando vivíamos en Burnaby, Gaticuchi (nuestro gato) descubrió que encima del rebozo y entre el papel de los regalos tendría un lugar calentito y seguro para no perderse nada y dormitar entre eventos.

Es de un carmín anaranjado, tomate, vino tinto, sangre, agua de jamaica, y si recuerdo bien hilos de negro. Pero se ve rojo. Es de lana. Pesa. Pica. Es como envolverte en una larga y ligera alfombra. Más vale no mojarlo

Recuerdo que mi mamá lo usó con vestido negro en varias ocasiones y se vio muy elegante. Que porte de mi mamá. No se como lo hizo.

El rebozo rojo, de ahora en adelante RR, el Rolls Royce de rebozos, es una herencia de mi papá de mi abuela Nena, su mamá. ¿Cuanto habrá viajado ese rebozo antes de llegar a su lugar en el baúl?

Entre mis recuerdos de Nena, ella tocaba piano junto a la puerta de la cocina, se mareaba aunque estuviera sentada, y me quiso mucho.Me imagino que su vida no fue fácil. Mujer soltera con hijo. En los años 50. Pero bien que se defendió, dando clases en colegios americanos y educando su hijo a la vez.
A veces el RR me lleva en la imaginación a la época en que era muy común usar rebozo. ¿Lo habrá usado mi abuelita en alguna salida romántica? ¿El RR la habrá abrigado contra vientos desérticos en el norte de México y en Tejas?

Solo puedo imaginar lo que fue su vida cotidiana, su experiencia como madre. Por algunas correspondencias se ve que sus amigas la quisieron asi como sus alumnos.

Ojalá que en esta Navidad el Rebozo Rojo me cuente algo más acerca de la vida de mi tierna y talentosa abuela, Filomena de Irureta Goyena.

Shirley Gnome Singer/Provocateur
Yeva & Thoenn Glover Dancers/Choreographers
JJ Lee Writer
Jacqueline Model
Cathy Marsden Psychiatrist
André De Mondo Wanderer
Colin MacDonald Saxophonist/Composer
Nina Gouveia Yoga Instructor
Stacey Hutton Excercise Physiologist
Colleen Wheeler Actor
Sarah Rodgers Actor, Director,Mother
Timothy Turner - Real Estate Agent
Kiera Hill Dancer
Johnna Wright & Sascha Director/Mother - Son/Dreamer
Decker & Nick Hunt Cat & 19th century amateur
George Bowering Poet
Celia Duthie Gallerist
Linda Lorenzo Mother
Katheryn Petersen Accordionist
Stefanie Denz Artist
Ivette Hernández Actress
Byron Chief-Moon Actor/Dancer
Colin Horricks Doctor
Ian Mulgrew Vancouver Sun Columnist
Jocelyn Morlock Composer
Corinne McConchie Librarian
Rachel Ditor Dramaturg
Patrick Reid Statesman, Flag Designer
Michael Varga CBC Cameraman
Bronwen Marsden Playwright/Actress/Director
David Baines Vancouver Sun Columnist
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward Photographer
Lauren Elizabeth Stewart Student
Sandrine Cassini Dancer/Choreographer
Meredith Kalaman Dancer/Choreographer
Juliya Kate Dominatrix

Thursday, December 13, 2012

My Mother's Red Shawl - El Rebozo Colorado
Shirley Gnome - Singer/Provocateur








Y'know, I used to be a "real" musician before this dirty crap I play now. But I took my joke songs to a comedy night in East Vancouver, just to get a free glass of bourbon, and my "bird," or whatever the fuck you want to call creative success, soared. That was a year ago. In August I won $20,000 in Patrick Maliha's The People's Champ of Comedy contest, because people liked my whorish mouth more than the seasoned vets of comedy.

Now I have to play these goddamn comedy shows. I'm playing near-empty restaurants on Tuesday nights to make strangers laugh while I try to hock them my CDs (when they could easily go home and steal my music for free). I am paid one fucking drink ticket for this opportunity. So, I guess, dreams can come true.

Now stop. If I had read that story out at a comedy show, people would have been inclined to take that in as funny. But did you? I actually did improvise this on Tuesday night to a near empty restaurant. Those who were there laughed. Quite a bit. And that's great - it's a joke, after all. But without stupid facial expression, timing, vocal inflection, etc. (delivery), it seems like the line between bitterness and joy gets washed the fuck out. So… uh… have I really given up being a musician? I mean, what the hell am I doing?

I've been told I'm too funny for music nights. But I've been told I'm too musical for stand up comedy. Then I've been told I'm not burlesque enough because I don't hang my tits out. I've also been told I'm too offensive to play fundraisers. And yet I've found a place in each one of those worlds in some way, crossing over them in ways that can be very disorienting, perplexing, fascinating, exciting. But as I traverse these different scenes and shift my performance focus over and over, I'm glad to have the chance to do my thing in so many different capacities. Belonging to a lot of different creative platforms feels like a privilege, and a reflection of a past full of different artistic ventures. Comedy is one avenue that has been very good to me. I might be a niche, and I may hit or miss, but I like my vantage point.

So, Tuesday I did two comedy nights. This Saturday, I'll be performing a few bits at the Neverland Burlesque show. On Sunday, I'll host a giant Awkward Christmas Party with a focus on music, complete with backup singers. Monday I'll likely sleep, maybe rub one out, y'know, the usual.

My songs are about sexy, silly, dirty things - like choosing to masturbate instead of eat breakfast when you only have time for one. Or, in a desperate attempt to fill the void left by a departed lover, filling up on pornography to the point where nothing shocks or arouses you anymore. Or, finding the joy in small penises. Also, saggy old man balls. Did I mention anal sex? I call it dirty c*untry. But I still strive to write good melodies, song structures, and chord progressions, while laying my vocal range softy yet firmly all over them. I still want the songs to be well written, beyond the dirty lyrics.

So is this comedy? Burlesque? Music? Performance art? I can't really be the one to tell you. I can tell you what I'm trying to do, not what I've accomplished. I'll have to let the songs and the shows speak for themselves and you can be the judge of whatever it is the fuck I am doing. I'm certainly not for everyone, but I'm definitely for some. So for you some, this is for you, however you like me, baby. Oh yeah. Now take off those pants and show me that fat ass.



Yeva & Thoenn Glover Dancers/Choreographers
JJ Lee Writer
Jacqueline Model
Cathy Marsden Psychiatrist
André De Mondo Wanderer
Colin MacDonald Saxophonist/Composer
Nina Gouveia Yoga Instructor
Stacey Hutton Excercise Physiologist
Colleen Wheeler Actor
Sarah Rodgers Actor, Director,Mother
Timothy Turner - Real Estate Agent
Kiera Hill Dancer
Johnna Wright & Sascha Director/Mother - Son/Dreamer
Decker & Nick Hunt Cat & 19th century amateur
George Bowering Poet
Celia Duthie Gallerist
Linda Lorenzo Mother
Katheryn Petersen Accordionist
Stefanie Denz Artist
Ivette Hernández Actress
Byron Chief-Moon Actor/Dancer
Colin Horricks Doctor
Ian Mulgrew Vancouver Sun Columnist
Jocelyn Morlock Composer
Corinne McConchie Librarian
Rachel Ditor Dramaturg
Patrick Reid Statesman, Flag Designer
Michael Varga CBC Cameraman
Bronwen Marsden Playwright/Actress/Director
David Baines Vancouver Sun Columnist
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward Photographer
Lauren Elizabeth Stewart Student
Sandrine Cassini Dancer/Choreographer
Meredith Kalaman Dancer/Choreographer
Juliya Kate Dominatrix

Wednesday, December 12, 2012



The holidays are here
the bells begin to chime
it makes me feel uncomfortable
every time
they make you
spread the joy, yeah
get into the spirit
by buying it, and eating it
until you take a massive it

Well I don't want it
I say no thanks
lets keep our little savings
in the big big banks I wanna
hide out with you
til the holiday's through
I hate Christmas
I just wanna bang you

Cuz presents decorations all the food and more
leaves me feeling like a dirty old
consumer whore
so no more tree
no more deck the halls
instead I'll be the place where you can
hang your balls

No family gatherings
that I detest
No creepy Uncle Walter
staring at my breasts

Even the food bank will
have to make do
so screw those guys
I wanna love you
I hate the poor
but baby I love you
Oooh, hoo hoo hoo,
It's just a scam
they got us all believing

What a terrible crime
to never leave enough time
to get down on your knees and
find the spirit of the season

Did you finish all your shopping? No,
I don't give a damn
but if by shopping you mean f----ing
then I can't say I am
if the kids are sad
without their Christmas perks
we'll give them
leftover halloween
bootleg fireworks

Well they'll be fine
and now the time is ours
they can entertain themselves
for a couple of hours
and if they light themselves on fire
we'll just shut the door

That's what the fire department is for
They're fine
That's what the fire department is for, yeah.
There should be an innuendo here
instead I'll say this,
I'll f--------------------------- sandwich -------- piss

cuz when it comes down to it
all I want is you.
So f-----------------------
all night
-----------------------------
I'll even do it twice
because I
just wanna bang you

Shirley Gnome's The Christmas Song

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Sherry, Mexico City 1963

We had Hilary, Bruce, Lauren and Rebecca for dinner on Saturday night. We were celebrating Hilary’s (our youngest daughter) birthday early as it is on December 14. At the table Rebecca brought up the subject of hipsters and hipster culture. Rosemary did not understand so Rebecca explained while looking at me and telling her that is was similar to that of the one that I had lived as a young man. It seems that hipsters of old went to coffee houses and listened to jazz, wore black turtle neck sweaters and discussed Sartre’s discounting the very existence of the subconscious mind.

I thought about it and in my head I looked back at 1963, 1964 when I attended Mexico City College. I had a friend who was in a different line of learning to mine. He was an artist. He wore thick glasses and if you note the picture here he had a pen set in his shirt pocket and a belt case for his reading glasses (or maybe his sun glasses). His name is Robert Hijar and he always seemed to have beautiful women following him. I liked to meet up with him at the school cafeteria where we discussed art, philosophy, music (baroque and avant-garde), and jazz while enjoying the company of his beautiful art groupies. At the time Hijar and a mutual Argentine friend of ours, Sylvia Mansour conspired to find me a girl. Hijar called me up one day to tell me he had organized a blind date for me with a beautiful artistic girl who even liked jazz. I met up with her at a café at the Zona Rosa called El Kineret.

Alex, Benji & Robert, Mexico City 1963

The beautiful girl facing me was black. She said to me, “I am Benjamin but call me Benji. I am Jewish.” Over our coffee she informed me that she never had dates with men unless she considered them husband material.

In those two years which were eventually ended by my draft into the Argentine Navy I lived the life of a bohemian. Rebecca would call it a hipster life.

Hijar and I frequented the Benjamin Franklin Library (an arm of the United States Information Service, a side arm of the CIA). Only many years later did Hijar inform me that his parents were agents and that the garage in the back of his house which had many very expensive reel to reel tape recorders was one of his parent’s place of work.


At the library we drank free Nescafe and listened to Gerry Mulligan, Dave Brubeck and Thelonius Monk played by a red haired man called Gerry Hulse on a beautiful turntable mated to a very expensive sound system. Two men in pink shirts always sat behind us.

Hijar would sketch while I stared at a girl called Judy Brown who was an acquaintance of Hijar’s. I was very attracted to her and I finally did convince her to visit my mother in Veracruz. The two-way trip was one sided in its romance as she told me she longed for her boyfriend … in California. Perhaps taking her to Veracruz was something like having coffee with Benji.

Hijar was not my only coffee shop companion. I liked to go to a place in the Zona Rosa called the Rana Sabia (the wise frog) where I drank black coffee while reading science fiction. By then I was smoking a pipe (Edgeworth Burley Mixture).

Even though I was studying engineering (I was very good at it until I had to tackle electricity) I was sort of an artsy-fartsy photographer. I went on photo safaris with Hijar and with a German friend. We took pictures at a Mexican Gran Prix and went to small towns outside Mexico City in search of pretty and old churches. We liked to go to the centre of the city, the Zócalo and we haunted the bookstores on Avenida Juarez or I stared at cameras that I could not afford at the national pawn shop, the Monte de Piedad.

We had no interest in popular music and I can remember the very day that my English friend Andrew Taylor (he became a most successful engineer) played for me the first Beatles single. I was not impressed.

By 1963, 64 I found my life’s true calling which was to photograph as many women as I thought attractive. The one here with the delightful nose I believe may have been called Sherry. She was tall, much taller than Hijar and met her through him. I never got past these snaps. But I have retained her negatives all these years.

I don’t think we were hipsters but I will not contradict Rebecca who at least has one thing to proudly claim about her old grandfather.

Monday, December 10, 2012

escombro1.

(De escombrar).

1. m. Desecho, broza y cascote que queda de una obra de albañilería o de un edificio arruinado o derribado. U. m. en pl.
Diccionario de la Real Academia Española (RAE)



An escombro is the stuff that remains after the demolition of a building.  I find it most interesting that Spanish has an exact word for this, a word that was part of my vocabulary when I took this picture in 1962. In English the equivalent rubble is rarely used in the plural. In Spanish the plural is more often used. Paradoxically the plural escombros  emphasizes the individual elements within the rubble. Which explains why the man in the picture is sifting through it.

The negative, of the scanned image here, and quite a few others are stored in four negative books made in Germany (instead of the usual plastic  the negs are slipped into a semi-transparent paper) that I purchased at that time. Many times through the years I have almost chucked out these remains (escombros?) of my picture-taking awakenings of the early 60s. Unlike my later pictures of the late 70s in these books there are few pictures of which there may be more than one version of. By the time motor winders became the norm with 35mm cameras as an option not only for speed but for the repetition that would "guarantee" the perfect take within the many I had almost (not quite) fallen for the crutch of making sure I had my shot by taking many interpretations of a first one.

Before electric motor winders (a winder shot up to about 3 exposures per second and anything faster like 8 or 9 was tackled by more expensive and heftier motor drives) were invented the Germans had introduced spring-powered motor cameras that were much too expensive for me to have ever considered buying. They were called Robots.

I own two motor winders (one for my Nikon FM and FM-2) and a heavy duty motor drive for my Nikon F-3. The latter is an imposing piece of obsolete gadgetry that would now serve me better as personal protection from a would-be thief in a third-world country or in a few back alleys in downtown Vancouver. I do not own any digital cameras of which most have the ability to shoot at bursts of high speed.

I am about to re-organize these, my first photographic efforts, into one binder with clear plastic sleeves that will give me access ( a clearer view) to images that I have ignored until now. I need not mix the chemicals and go down to the darkroom even though today, as I write, there are a couple of 8x10s that I printed in the darkroom today, flattening under heavy books in my living room. I need not mix chemicals and go down to a cool musty darkroom. I can sit here at my living room desk (a lovely Edwardian one) with the warm comfort of my scanner on my left. I have just scanned this picture which I took with a very fast film of the time called Agfa Isopan Record which was rated at 1250 ASA (or ISO in today's film and sensor speed/sensitivity rating). It was certainly the wrong film to use on what must have been a sunny day in Mexico City. It is not quite sharp and the negative is slightly over-exposed. I took the picture somewhere behind what was then one of the tallest buildings in the city, La Lotería Nacional. Houses were being torn down behind the building to make way for the widening of avenues and the construction of new low-cost rental housing that was to be called Tlatelolco.

I spotted this man and snapped and moved on. And yet this image has been in my head for years as a sort of  signature shot in which I had almost learned to make my camera (a Pentacon-F) an extension of my eyes.

It is much too obvious, a cliché perhaps, to state that this escombro of my past life is rubble from which I built a new beginning as a photographer in Vancouver in 1975. I am going back to those roots as I increasingly shoot more with my little cameras (I call them little even if they are not so) and the feeling seems to lighten my limbs and help we walk with more speed as I begin, again, to see things for the first time.

In the last 10 years I have reverted back to taking one shot and not repeating it with a second to make sure. In fact I have expensive rolls of 10-exposure slide film processed with only five takes. I tell my subjects, that's it even there is that lingering feeling that I should not waste film and finish the roll. It is a lesson that I learned well back in 1962 not quite knowing that rubble would one day become the building blocks of a style that I have stayed true to.

Sunday, December 09, 2012

Pesos y medidas del ojo

¿Cuánto pesa un ojo en la balanza?
¿Cuánto mide un sueño entre dos párpados?
¿Cuánto pesa en tus manos un ojo cerrado,
un ojo de muerto y un ojo pelado?

El ojo no se mide de comisura a comisura,
Ni se vende por peso ni tamaño,
el ojo vale por las distancias
que recorre afuera de sí mismo,
y por la luz que es capaz de devorar.

Hay ojos que no se cansan de volar.
Hay ojos artificiales que miran sin mirar.
Hay ojos parecederos como frutos de estación,
hay ojos que viajan a la velocidad de la luz.

Al fondo de tus ojos muertos,
un ojo vivo nos está mirando.













Weights and measures for the eye


How much has the eye to weigh in the balance?
What does the dream between two eyelids measure?
How much does a closed eye, the eye of death,
an eye peeled weigh in your hand?

The eye isn’t measured from corner to corner,
nor is it sold by size nor weight,
the eye is valued by the distances
it covers outside it
and the light it’s capable of taking in.

There are eyes that are never too tired to soar.
There are artificial eyes that see without seeing.
There are eyes as perishable as fruit in season,
there are eyes that travel with the speed of light.

At the back of your dead eyes
a living one peers out at us.

Homero Aridjis
Eyes to See Otherwise – Ojos de otro mirar
Selected Poems

Edited by Betty Ferber and
George McWhirter