In 1975 when my wife, two daughters and I moved from Mexico City to Vancouver it was a shocking new territory for us. We adjusted little by little to life here.

Because we had little money we rented a town house in the Vancouver suburb of Burnaby. It had a large basement with a garage. I converted the basement garage into a studio and the rest of  it into a very nice dark room. In Mexico I had a darkroom in a bathroom. Here I had a darkroom with a bathroom.

To no avail was I able to find a job as a photographer so for a couple of years I worked at Tilden Rent-a-Car on Alberni Street in downtown Vancouver.

A Filipino friend told me that Vancouver had a clothing optional beach called Wreck Beach by the University of British Columbia. I decided to  explore it.

My wife did not approve of the fact that I seemed to waste my spare time at the beach in the summer. I could not explain to her that my menial job with its revolving shifts left we wasted.

It was in Wreck Beach that I discovered a liking to taking pictures of unclothed women. I watched photographers do it and how their models were willing subjects.

I was befriended by a few souls who said they lived in a nearby area called Kitsilano. They told me this is where Vancouver’s hippies hung out. In fact there was a hippy publication called the Georgia Straight that had its headquarters on 4^th Avenue which was the core area for hippies who liked to drink their red zinger tea at the Soft Rock Café.

My first willing subject for the kind of photography I was keen on was a lovely woman called April. I took many photographs of her and I must stress here that I had no idea of what I was doing. I used my screw mount Pentaxes loaded with Kodak B+W infrared film or with a then experimental and very sharp Kodak b+w film (designed for solar flare photography) called Special Order 410.

My youngest daughter, her husband and two daughters have moved to Burnaby and this 74 year-old man and his Rosemary are now living in Kitsilano. I have Kodak B+W Infrared Film in my fridge. I wonder where April is this December.

April in October at the Safeway counter