Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

A THOUSAND WORDS - Alex Waterhouse-Hayward's blog on pictures, plants, politics and whatever else is on his mind.

But Peers Beyond Her Mesh

Saturday, May 10, 2014

421

A Charm invests a face

Imperfectly beheld—

The Lady date not lift her Veil

For fear it be dispelled—

But peers beyond her mesh—

And wishes—and denies—

Lest Interview—annul a want

That Image—satisfies—

Emily Dickinson

A charm invests her face

Link to: But Peers Beyond Her Mesh

Where Have You Gone Husker Red?

Friday, May 09, 2014

Rosa 'James Mason' , May 9, 2014

Some years back the perennial plant associations in North America would parade the plant of the year. My own American Hosta Society would pick the Hosta of the Year. As far as I know things have not changed.

I remember that in 1996 the plant of the year was Penstemon digitalis ‘Husker Red’. Since then I have not noticed one in either our garden or in the occasional garden I visit.

This mentality of bringing something exciting and new to the plant world every year is paralleled by the camera companies vying for attention by bending over backwards to launch the camera that will make their competitors’ obsolete. My cutting edge Fuji X-E1 of last year was quickly replaced (new & improved, 50% more, etc!) by the X-E2.

Since we started gardening in our Kerrisdale home many plants and trees have died because of old age, or our ignorance. They didn’t get enough shade or got too much sun or suffered in a drought. With our city’s decision to ban all kinds of insecticidal spraying many (two in our garden) cherry trees have succumbed to the Cherry Bark Tortrix or the Winter Moth. Some trees, the cherry trees and the birches simply should have never been planted because of our wet conditions.

Alleyne Cook

Our expert gardener friend Alleyne Cooke defines plants in two categories. One is “a fine garden plant.” Those that are not are simply “the rest.”

Still Cooke believes, as most gardeners do, in hope. There are some magnolias and rhododendrons that take years before they bloom. You plant these anyway because we must all live with hope.

I planted a Magnolia grandiflora (sometimes called a Southern Magnolia as it flowers in the south of the United States) 12 years ago in my front garden. It has yet to flower. Our neighbours across the lane, the Stewarts had not had apples from their trees ever. Fifteen years ago when they were about to move (they were too old to take care of their house on their own they were told by their real-estate agent daughter) the trees had fruit. Mrs. Stewart gave us a baked apple pie as a parting gift.

I have a few other recalcitrant plants in our garden and like players of a losing baseball team I always tell myself, “perhaps next year.”

So, in a 28 year old garden with two surviving gardeners, Rosemary and me, the plants that remain are good garden plants. Some are fancy and some are ordinary. But they have proved their worth by their longevity.

They, the plants and trees, share with me (I like to think of it this way) knowledge of where I buried six cats that died in our home through the years. I have never told Rosemary these locations. The sorriest burial was of our white female cat that was eviscerated by a raccoon. Fortunately Rosemary never saw the poor thing dead and bloody as I did.

I have been scanning my plants now for at least 10 years. I started with roses and I have from there transferred my interest to just about every plant that can be scanned. I believe that the giclées made by my friend Grant Simmons are the most beautiful plant reproductions I have seen anywhere and at last count I have only sold one to my lawyer friend Christopher Dafoe. The few that appreciate these plant scans ask me for my secret. I tell them all about the mechanics but I also tell them that I communicate (talk) with my roses and I know when to bring them inside for the scan. I think I almost believe myself. I have seen other plant scans and they seem to be like portraits of people where the photographer never connected with subject.

Rosa 'Reine Victoria'

My plant scans will see the light of day in some other time. I might not be around when that happens. What is interesting and poignant is that my scan of Rosa ‘Reine Victoria’ and of many (many) others will be of roses that will be impossible to find. With the garden industry plummeting, nurseries can no longer bring in exotic roses and, of course, that plant of the year, 1996 Penstemon digitalis ‘Husker Red’.

Link to: Where Have You Gone Husker Red?

That Egg Chair

Thursday, May 08, 2014

Rosemary and the egg chair, Arboledas 1974

The egg chair lies forlorn in our basement. I haven’t been able to find a place for it since we moved from our house in Burnaby in 1986. We originally had it in our Arboledas, Estado de México home. Ceilings in our house there were of concrete so you could hang it anywhere if you had a proper drill.

Our present home has vaulted ceilings and I never had the gumption to poke a hole to find some beam I could hang the chair from.

In Burnaby sometime around 1979 or 1989 I photographed one of the most elegant women I have ever met. She was a jazz dancer who appeared in most of the variety shows that were so popular at the time at our local CBC. I think I first met her for my first show as a stills man, the Wolfman Jack Show. ViktoriaLangton had legs that rivaled my mother’s and a face with cheekbones that resembled a Cinemascope screen. Add to that a distinguished South African accent and you had real glamour.

When I photographed her in my low ceiling Burnaby basement (the garage) I screwed a hook to the ceiling and hung the egg chair.

Alexandra, 7. the egg chair was on the right of frame

One of the reasons for today’s blog besides showing you the egg chair (which I painted with white automobile lacquer) is that I find it interesting to see the development of my portrait technique. In both these pictures I was not good with Langton’s hands. After repeated criticism from my Rosemary through the years, I would never show an ungraceful hand or crop out fingers.

Viktoria Langton, 1979, Pentax Spotmatic-F

What I do notice is a consistency of approach. I don’t like to put all my photographic eggs in one basket. It was anathema in my years as a magazine photographer to return to the assigning art director and say, “I did not load my camera properly,” or “The flash sync was off,” or I forgot to load my camera with film,” and the many other tricks of the trade that often conspired to prevent me from taking one useable image. Early on I learned to have backup equipment handy. And, very important I would use more than one camera.

Mamiya RB-67

In one of the photographs here I used a Mamiya RB-67 with a 65mm wide angle lens (the only lens I had for that camera at that time) loaded with a very fine grain b+w film, Ilford Pan F which I believe I rated at 50 ISO. For the second shot I used a Pentax Spotmatic F, a 35mm lens and Kodak Technical Pan which I also rated at 50 ISO.

More now than ever, I like the multiple camera approach. A digital camera may provide you with b+w, colour, low contrast and high contrast on the same picture, but these variations will still be from only one photograph. Here you see two similar photographs that I believe are substantially different.

And as I look at the early pictures of our egg chair in Arboledas I can remember sitting in it and listening to Carole King, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Rod Stewart and Gerry Mulligan. Now minus that egg chair I still listen to Gerry Mulligan.

Link to: That Egg Chair

An Invitation - Not

Wednesday, May 07, 2014

Invitation to go to Madrid on May 7.

Sometimes one language over another might reveal the meaning behind a word. Most of us would never consider that the verb to invite which comes from Latin means with or in life.

In is much more obvious in Spanish where the word has two versions. One is invitar and the other envidar. The latter is sometimes used in an old Spanish card game and it means to invite to play.

Envidar is much closer in hinting that to invite means I have something to share with you. This word, then is a very intimate. An invitation (not that odd and more mechanical sounding invite) is something personal and very special.

I once had a very beautiful woman call me up in the middle of the night for an invitsation that as pleasant as it was I had to refuse. This woman, of Latin origin, wanted me to take a course (she was going to pay) at a local encounter group called Lifespring. This encounter group was going to help me remove all my guilt so I could abandon my wife and two daughters and move to Hawaii with this wonderful woman.

When I first arrived in Vancouver in 1975 Rosemary and were invited to something called “after dinner drinks”. Neither Rosemary (born in New Dublin, Ontario) or I knew what exactly this meant. I thought it was odd. For many years when people from abroad asked me about Vancouver I invariably said, “Vancouverites are as cold as their tap water.”

At 71, in my de facto retirement I can state that phone calls are at a minimum as are invites to (Thank God!) to stag parties, Saturday weddings (that ruin your weekend), birthday parties and parties in general. I do feel a tad isolated. But then many of my generation are dead or suffering from life threatening diseases or going through rapid mental deterioration.

That most personal invitation, one to visit someone began to fall apart with the advent of web pages. The Vancouver Sanitation Department invited you to “come and visit us at VancSanDep.Ca”. Fantastic I was being invited to look at all I did not want to know about garbage.

Browse is another word that has lost its strength. Whenever I browsed at Duthies the people who worked there knew me and they would approach to suggest. This was pleasant. Browsing at Chapters is not quite the same. For personal attention, re cameras I go to Leo’s Cameras as opposed to Future Shop where attention is impersonal.

All that brings me to a pet peeve I have harboured for some time. This is the facebook invite.

If you invite someone to your birthday party you might be decent enough to state you don’t want a present. If you invite someone for dinner you might tell them not to bring anything. You just want the pleasure of the company.

But these facebook invitations to events in which you are given three choices, to go, not go or be in doubt about going, involve you, the invitee to pay so you can go to the event. I get invitations in facebook by people I don’t really know to go to rock concerts late at night (who goes to those anymore?) or to art openings.

It is easy for me to invite my friend John Lekich for dinner. I can call him up. I can email him or (and I don’t quite know why I would do this) direct message him in facebook. This would signal to Lekich that I am not sending a blanket invitation to all the people I know or know a little in facebook, even those who are geographically somewhere else. Standard facebook reply to one of these blanket invitations is, “I would love to attend but I will be out of town attending my mother-in-law’s funeral.”

By matter of principle I ignore all facebook blanket invitations. But I can be directly messaged. That is a tad more personal.

Link to: An Invitation - Not

Separate & Sulky

Tuesday, May 06, 2014

It is Tuesday, 13 January, 1829 and Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Hervey of the 6^th Light Dragoons has returned to London from a campaign in South Africa with his friend Edward Fairbrother. They are in their “club” the United Services Club. It took me a while, enjoying author Allan Mallinson’s odd style (perhaps replicating the writing of the time) that it was about my old friend (I have read Mallinson’s 10 previous installments in the career of Mathew Hervey) having a bath and experiencing new-fangled running water with faucets!

Brigadier Allan Mallinson is a former infantry and cavalry officer, with thirty-five years’ service in the British Army. All the history and the traditions of the British Army during the era of Napoleon (Mallinson’s first Matthew Hervey novel begins with Waterloo in The Close Run Thing) somehow evoke the land side of things most nicely with the counterpart of the same at sea by Patrick O’Brian. Unfortunately with Patrick O’Brian dead I will not be able to read more of his Captain Aubrey/Dr. Maturin nautical novels set in the Napoleonic Wars. Fortunately Allan Mallinson seems to be happily at it providing the many that must be fans with new situations in which Matthew Hervey quotes in Latin, Greek and of writers of his age. Below is the beginning of Allan Mallinson's 11th novel On His Majesty's Service.

Hervey had rarely seen water come with such force. It was that of the falls in Canada, near Fort York (if an infinitesimal fraction of the volume), which a decade past he had observed for himself in their icy midwinter trickle. And the enveloping steam was like the mist that had shrouded him in safety on the heights of Esi-Klebeni as the warriors who had assassinated the Zulu king pursued him with like intent.

‘Remarkable,’ he said, shaking his head.’

His friend Edward Fairbrother took the cheroot from his mouth and frowned at its dampened glow. ‘I confess I am astonished that you wonder at such a thing after all you have seen,’ he replied, blowing the end of the remaining three inches of the best Indian leaf. ‘We have come here twice by steamship, have we not? And I fancy the Romans bathed with scarcely less luxury hereabout in centuries past.’

Fairbrother’s practiced insouciance almost invariably amused. Indeed Hervey thought of his friend increasingly in terms of indispensability – not as jester but (since it was he that had spoken of the ancients) more as the crouching cautioner in the triumphant procession: Respica te, hominem te memento – ‘Look behind thee, and remember thou art but a man.’

Not that Hervey saw himself as the man honoured in triumph, for although he had saved what remained of his troop in the desperate fight in the kraal, he had not been able to save the Zulu king’s favourite, Pampata (his ward in their flight thither); but he returned now to London with commendations for resource and bravery, and in the prospect of command at last of his regiment. This latter, whatever his regrets – above all the slaughter of men under his authority – was ample cause for satisfaction. But first, before any triumphs, or anything remotely resembling it – before, that awaited him – he was determined to bathe.

‘And by this ’andle ’ere, sir, the water is regulated,’ said the valet, first slowing and then stopping altogether the surge. ‘And then you can ’ave it as ’ot or as cold as you will by this other ’andle ’ere, sir which regulates the cold water in like manner.’
On His Majesty's Service - Allan Mallinson

Mallinson has a way of inserting relevant information, little at a time. As if this information were the first chip in a tall round box of Pringles.

Fairbrother had already declared his intention to do nothing but sit in the shade of the seraglio’s courtyard, uncomprehending all the language spoken about him and therefore able with perfect concentration to finish reading – strange as it seemed to Hervey – Guy Mannering, which had lodged several days unopened in his small pack, with a mark at the beginning of the second part.

‘What moved you to choose it?’ asked Hervey when they were alone, more disposed to humour him of late.

‘It was in the bundle I bought as a single lot at your bookseller’s. I wanted the Hazlitt, principally, and the others looked engaging.’

At this point I must clarify that I had no idea of who was Guy Mannering nor the importance of Hazlitt. I let the info pass me by.

‘I confess I’ve not read it.’

‘You ought to. Mannering’s a colonel.’

‘I imagine it is Scotch?’

‘There, and Holland, and India.’

Hervey was taking his ease over yet more coffee. ‘You know, I read Waverly, for he’d caught the rebellion very well, said those who knew about it, but I confess I was not greatly drawn to Scotland. I can’t think but that its wildness is mean, or melancholy – though I wouldn’t mind seeing Culloden.’

And of course this ignoramus still did not get the drift. By the almost end of On His Majesty’s Service I finally did get it.

He took a few more thoughtful paces, and closed the book. ‘And how was your novel? Did you finish it?’

‘I did, indeed. And it’s given me an idea. Let me read something to you.’ Fairbrother opened the Scott [yes!] at the last page. ‘Guy Mannering’s returned from India a colonel and he’s resolved to give up his house and build anew: “See here’s the plan of my bungalow, with the all convenience for being separate and sulky when I please.’

‘It does not have the ring of great literature, so I imagine you have another purpose for reading it.’

Fairbrother smiled, grateful that his design was half explained. ‘Well I am minded to give up my house at the Cape and build the same, a bungalow, close to your quarters at Hounslow – close enough to stroll by of an evening, yet far enough to be “separate and sulky” when I please. What say you?’

And of course after looking it all up I found out that Sir Walter Scott (1771 – 1832) was a lawyer/poet during an age when writing a novel was simply not done by a man of good upbringing. He did not want his father to know about his penchant for wanting to write a novel. So Scott published his first, Waverly in 1814 it was done so anonymously. When his other novels became (runaway in the parlance of our era) successes they were published as “by the author of Waverly” so these subsequent novels were called Waverly novels. It makes all the sense that Mallinson has his protagonists read books of their time and to quote in the various languages learned at school.

There is a poignant attraction to become the friend of a protagonist you read about in a progression as is the case of Mathew Hervey's rise in the British Army. This was the attraction of that series by Alexandre Dumas, his Musketeer series. It was best put by Robert Louis Stevenson who read the Vicomte de Bragellone at least five times. Of his second reading he wrote, “I would sit down with the Vicomte for a long, silent, solitary lamp-light evening by the fire. And yet I know not why I call it silent, when it was enlivened with such clatter of horse-shoes, and such a rattle of musketry, and such a stir of talk; or why I call these evenings silent in which I gained so many friends. I would rise from my book and pull the blind aside, and see the snow and the glittering hollies checker a Scotch garden, and the winter moonlight brighten the white hills. Thence I would turn again to the crowded and sunny field of life in which is was so easy to forget myself, my cares and my surroundings: a place as busy as a city, bright as a theatre, thronged with memorable faces, and sounding with delightful speech. I carried the thread of that epic into my slumbers, I woke with it unbroken, I rejoiced to lunge into the book again at breakfast, it was with a pang that I must lay it down and turn to my own labours; for no part of the world has ever seemed to me so charming as these pages, and not even my friends are quite as real, perhaps quite so dear, as d’Artagnan.”

I feel the same about Matthew Paulinus Hervey.

Romance in the Napoleonic Wars

Link to: Separate & Sulky

Out Tangoing Tango

Monday, May 05, 2014

Left Photograph by Helmut Newton, Right Dirk Bogarde Estate

Dirk Bogarde 'The Look'

I remember being surprised, and showing it rather obviously, when Luchino Visconti, reading through the cast of a film which I had just agreed to make with him, said’…and finally I will use the English girl Charlotte Rampling for the young wife who is sent to the concentration camp…’

‘Rampling! But why?’ I remember saying tactlessly. Visconti placed the forefinger and thumb of each hand around his eyes, framing them. ‘For this,’he said. ‘For the Look.’

…Rampling keeps her own sensuality well banked down, but one is constantly aware of the fire below in the lithe walk, the measured tread, the slender length of leg, the curve of the neck and throat and perhaps, most of all, in the meaning and the suggestions which lie behind the Look. Those alone can still a breath. It seems all that is necessary.

Dirk Bogarde, Paris 23.2.87

The above is in the introduction to Charlotte Rampling’s book With Compliments – Charlotte Rampling.

Some who may read this blog every once in a while might know that I have been married since 1968 to the same woman, my Rosemary. But I have often told her that should I get any offer from Rampling I would leave her on the spot. Perhaps I only say this in jest.

The fact is that sometime in 1988 I traveled to Toronto to show my portfolio to magazine art directors. In a remainder bookstore on Yonge Street I found the Rampling book for which I paid something less than $10. It is in my list of my most valuable books with a first edition of The Old Man and the Sea and a British first of Neuromancer. Most serious book collectors would certainly not approve of Rampling being in that list. To hell with them!

For three years now I have vowed not to buy any more books and I order my reading material on my on-line Vancouver Public Library. I direct the VPL to send the books to my local Oakridge branch. My Oakridge branch has one of the most remarkable book/withdrawal/rejects shelf (on wheels). My latest purchase is the Bogarde book for which I paid $1.50. It is in excellent shape and it may have been read once. Novels go for $1.00.

As soon as I got home with my purchase I went to the index and looked up Rampling, Charlotte. Here is what I found:

In a letter to Bee Gilbert (Photographer, screenwriter and producer. She met Dirk for The Fixer (1969) when she was living with Ian Holm.):

…Honestly…during my fifth simulated orgasm on the film with Cavani [she directed The Night Porter] in Rome…I suddenly wondered what the hell I was doing at 53 with my back on the floor, my flies undone, being straddled by beloved Miss Rampling..with an entire Italian Crew watching and eating pizza. Nothing I had ever done in Rank prepared me for that …and it also hurt my elbows most damnably. So I have decided not to do anything else until I REALLY feel so dotty about it i cant resist. But the shit of it all…the hotel rooms, early calls, hanging about, arguing about continuity, avoiding Press…faking Fucks…BASTA! We have apparently out Tangoed ‘Tango’…I cant say that makes me happy…but it might make some lolly. I ADORED Miss Cavani…I used to hit her so that she would cry..so thatI could cuddle her. Kinky? Betcha…Love end of page. D.

OOOO(Hugs for Ian.) For you XXXXXXXXXXXXXX and two OO’s

Link to: Out Tangoing Tango

Heraclitus & My Ghosts Of Dance

Sunday, May 04, 2014

Fei Guo, September 2003

A while back I joined a facebook discussion group called Dialogue on Dance Writing. I felt I wanted to comment on some of the postings but I could not do so unless I joined. I did and a few weeks after I was allowed in. Nothing much ever happens in Dialogue on Dance Writing and the only active contributor seems to be Battery Opera’s Su-Feh Lee. Today I saw a posting that interested and I contributed. But I had a nagging feeling that Su-Feh Lee and I had met previously.

And indeed I had sometime in February 2003 I photographed Lee and her partner David McIntosh (Battery Opera) for the Georgia Straight. I have no idea what led me to make an 8x10 print of the session and take it to Point Grey Road and immerse it at the beach. I remember I dropped one of the film backs of my Mamiya RB into the sea water and that the repair exceeded what the Straight paid me for the photograph.

While rummaging through my files to find Su-Feh Lee I also found the portraits of a Ballet BC dancer I have little recollection of. There are negatives, a contact sheet and one Polaroid in the file labeled Guo, Fei.

Battery Opera - David McIntosh, Su-Feh Lee, Feb 2003

The Polaroid is luminous and the expression on Guo is just right.

Since I stopped being asked to photograph dancers and other members of the arts organizations of Vancouver I have noticed that not only has dance writing and dance previews have declined in quantity but also (who am I to opine as I am a photographer) on quality, too.

I look with interest and jealousy the photographs of the different dance companies in New York City in my NY Times. In these ads the dancers are given personality and their sex is made evident. The pictures show dancers as actors, as people and as humans.

Local images of dancers seem to reflect them as soaring birds, frozen in time and space. There is nothing of their humanity in these images.

As an obsolete/redundant ex-magazine photographer I believe that there is ample room to show dancers in another light.

I sometimes feel that all those dance performances I have been to, become instant ghosts in my mind. Like Heraclitus wrote, I dip my hand into waters that are not ever repeated. But like sounds that linger I feel that the performances and the dancers remain somewhere and can be brought back. My files of dancers I should perhaps re-file as Ghosts of Dance.