My photography files are like an iceberg gone south. Today I looked at my Mexico files and found at least 200 photographs, in b+w, colour negative and Kodachromes on Palenque in Chiapas. I was there in 1981. In those days I traveled alone. 

When I did this in Mexico in the hot summer and rainy season I was accompanied by a box of Flor de la Costa cigars from Veracruz to keep mosquitoes at bay.

I remember leaving in the morning from a ramshackle hotel in Palenque where I was told by the front desk clerk that they had no way of giving me a wakeup call. This meant I was unable to sleep that night knowing I had to make it to the Villahermosa airport on time to take my Mexicana de Aviación flight.

I remember that the third class bus had many forward gears and every time it had to stop to pick up or drop off passengers with pigs and fowls that it took quite a while for the bus to pick up speed. I was worried but  could not but notice that the wire fences had strange slim wooden poles that were all sprouting green leaves.

In many ways I felt like an amateur archaeologist traveling at a time when at least in Palenque there were no Americans and Expedia was as alien as Starbucks in Oaxaca.

 

For the September 18, 2003 issue of the Georgia Straight I had to shoot an assignment that involved at least four restaurant locations where I had to photograph three rock bands together (three different for each restaurant). The idea is that the bands were asked where they liked to hang out. From those answers I picked the locations. It was not quite the age of email so I had to call these bands (they had day jobs) and plead for them to show up at the same time at the location. I believe  that that I did one more in 2005 and then told Mike Usinger (the nut at the Straight) to never call me again for this assignment.

The metamorphosis of inspiration comes in unexpected ways and leads to directions unknown.

But then I had to satisfy my curiousity of featuring her pectorals but not in a way that would have conventional dance clothing. A bikini was out of the question. It would have been in execrable bad taste.

I decided (who knows where that idea came from) to go to Dressew in downtown Vancouver on West Hastings and buy white tape (I told myself it had to be off white). The results of the idea are here.

A few weeks later I had my then Jo-Ann Thursday model showed up at my studio. She saw the tape in a corner and asked me about it. I told her. I gave her the tape and began to take some photographs.

In my case, the intelligent thing to do was to say nothing and to wait for the progression. Part of that progression is here. Then a few months later I noticed the figures of people outside the studio window. That inspired me to these two blogs. This one and this one.

I marvel at the fact that it all began with a whisper in my ear.

Not having a large studio is stifling. Any inspiration has to come from the small quarters of my tiny studio. What I need now is a (alas she is gone!) is a Thursday girl, one who I can silently watch as a story progresses.

Only those who watch late-night films on TV would know who the actor Peter Breck was. He was an American but for many years he lived in Vancouver. He died here in 2012. I was lucky enough to meet this character actor of many westerns in May of 1989. Photographically a lot has happened to change how photographs are now taken. 

Peter Breck - Wikipedia

Fortunately even though I am now 74 I can remember how I took these 18 photographs.

It all began with Ilford F-P4 film in 220 format (twice as long as 120) which I used with my Mamiya RB-67 which shot pictures that were 6x7 cm. Each roll of 220 gave me 20 photographs but the contact sheets and holders could only accommodate 18. I usually did not shoot those last 2 remaining exposures. 220 film is long gone but Kodak and Ilford  make 120 film which I happily shoot with my Mamiya when I can. I process the film in my third bathroom and scan the results.

While I took these photographs of the actor for the arts weekly The Georgia Straight, the art director at Vancouver Magazine Chris Dahl where although I was a freelance I was the de-facto staff guy who took most of the stuff. At that time Dahl was influenced by the b+w cover photographs by Irving Penn in Vanity Fair. I was commanded to shoot in that style. This involved lights that were either grids or spotlights. I also slipped a very deep green filter in front of my lens that blocked red blemishes on his face (and made them more obvious as they were rendered sharper). I also had my 140 mm macro lens very close to Breck’s face. I liked and like to listen to my subjects breathe. I made sure to use a good deodorant and I never forgot or forget to brush my teeth well.

When I scanned the two contact sheets I noticed my writing on the back. Dahl who read any and every magazine he could find asked me one day, “Do you know about split contrast enlarging?” I didn’t so I researched it.

My enlarger had what was and is called a colour head. You can dial (the filters are called dichroic) individually the colours magenta, yellow and cyan. At the time I was using Ilford paper that we would call multi-contrast. If you did your exposure of the paper under the enlarger with lots of magenta the contrast increased. If you used yellow the result was softer. The idea was to use a bit of both (individually) to get shadow detail and still get bright highlights.

Of course with the advent of the scanner (and I have a very good Epson Perfection V-700 Photo machine I can do that split enlarging with the shadow/highlight tool of my 14 year-old Photoshop.

I married my mother. 

Let me explain. In the days when airplanes landed and on the tarmac they brought a staircase so that passengers could descend, sometime the staircase was on the other side of the plane. As I looked through the airport window I would watch for my mother’s legs. I knew instantly when I saw her legs.

My mother had beautiful legs and feet. She wasn’t especially lovely of face but I can assert here that I did inherit her face, her crooked smile, her legs and her feet. My feet, even though I am 74 have no bunions. They are smooth and you would suspect if you saw them that they belong to a man in his early 30s.

I was offered a free massage. Now I am a bit shy and when I pointed this out to the publicity woman she told me I could have a pedicure instead.

The room where I walked into had a row of 10 women all with their feet in large plastic basins. Some of them had those beauty parlour hairdryers on their head. I sat down and removed my shoes and socks (I had made sure to  thoroughly wash my feet before I even walked into the place.

The women were gossiping about their men and of the men of their friends. Some of the stuff they were talking about made me blush. As soon as the pedicurist said something like, “Wow what wonderful feet!” There was silence. The women asked me what my secret was. I told them that even as a little boy I could always find a shoe size that fit just right. I told them about my mother and about her swimmer’s feet and how I had inherited them without her talent for swimming. She had learned to swim in Manila Bay.

When I spotted these pictures that I took many moons ago at the Drake Hotel I knew I would have to write this. At the time that I took these two photographs there was a beautiful ecdysiast called Legs Diamond. She had legs to kill for and the special peculiarity that she (she was not the only one, there was another) had a third but very small nipple.

In 1968 my first glimpse of my future wife, Rosemary Healey, was from behind. She was wearing a very short shirt-waist dress. She had long blonde hair down to her waist.  Her legs were superb. The rest is my personal history.