Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

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

I TOOK my power in my hand

Saturday, March 11, 2017

My blog has an awesome internal search engine. When I decided to use this photograph to illustrate an Emily Dickinson poem, that is one of my favourites, I knew I had already done a blog.

In my darkroom days (1962-2016) I had different ways of interpreting my negatives. It was Ansel Adams who compared a negative to a musical score and that no interpretation will ever be the same. I had periods when my prints were high contrast, low contrast, or they were very dark or not so.

You will be able to find the earlier version of this blog here. Since I am now obsolete-redundant & retired I have time in my hands. One of my favourite pastimes is to find photographs in my files to illustrate my favourite poems of Emily Dickinson, the poems and stories of Jorge Luís Borges and Julio Cortázar.

This is but a remnant of my many years as a magazine photographer where I was given the task of illustrating essays and manuscripts with my photographs.

If were a younger man, with more time in my hands, I might have considered publishing a book of Dickinson poems with my photographs. For now, this blog will suffice.

I TOOK my power in my hand

And went against the world;

’T was not so much as David had,

But I was twice as bold.

I aimed my pebble, but myself

Was all the one that fell.

Was it Goliath was too large,

Or only I too small?

Emily Dickinson

More Emily Dickinson

to know if any Human eyes were near
Linda Melsted - the music of the violin does not emerge alone
The Charm invests her face
A sepal, a petal and a thorn
The Savior must have been a docile Gentleman
T were blessed to have seen
There is no frigate like a book

I pay in satin cash
Emily Dickinson's White Dress & a Hunter of Lost Souls

El vestido blanco - The White Dress
Water makes many beds
The viola da gamba
But sequence ravelled out of reach
A parasol is the umbrella's daughter
Without the power to die
Lessons on the piny
Ample make this bed
How happy is the little stone

Sleep is supposed to be
The shutting of the eye
I dwell in possibility
when Sappho was a living girl
In a library
A light exists in spring
The lady dare not lift her veil
I took my power in my hand
I find my feet have further goals
I cannot dance upon my toes
The Music of the Violin does not emerge alone
Red Blaze
He touched me, so I live to know
Rear Window- The Entering Takes Away
Said Death to Passion
We Wear the Mask That Grins And Lies
It was not death for I stood alone
The Music in the Violin Does Not Emerge Alone
I tend my flowers for thee
Lavinia Norcross Dickinson
Pray gather me anemone!
Ample make her bed
His caravan of red
Me-come! My dazzled face
Develops pearl and weed
But peers beyond her mesh
Surgeons must be very careful
Water is taught by thirst
I could not prove that years had feet
April played her fiddle
A violin in Baize replaced
I think the longest hour
The spirit lasts
http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2014/03/i-left-them-in-ground-emily-dickinson.html
http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2014/01/i-felt-my-life-with-both-my-hands.html
http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2011/03/currer-bell-emily-dickinson-charlotte.html
http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2011/03/and-zero-at-bone-with-dirks-of-melody.html
http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2011/05/charm-invests-her-face.html

http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2011/06/tell-truth-but-tell-it-slant.html

http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2011/06/theres-certain-slant-of-light.html

http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2011/06/then-mashes-it-to-death.html

http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2011/06/adjusted-to-tomb.html

http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2011/06/i-could-not-see-to-see.html
http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2011/06/blonde-assasin-passes-on.html

http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2011/12/dirk-commemorate-itself.html

http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2011/12/lawful-as-equilibrium.html

http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2011/12/there-is-no-frigate-like-book.html

http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2011/12/light-is-sufficient-to-itself.html

http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2012/11/thanatos-two-tiny-rhododendrons.html

http://blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com/2012/12/you-almost-bathed-your-tongue.html

Link to: I TOOK my power in my hand

Jorge Luís Borges - So that our hands would meet

Friday, March 10, 2017

Kimberly was one of the most beautiful women I ever met. I photographed her four times and it was in the last two sessions that I finally noticed her fantastically strong and sturdy hands. They weren’t beautifully graceful as a woman’s hands are supposed to be in our conventional world. But these hands were confident hands and also hands you knew could open a tightly closed jam jar.

I have written about Kimberly's hands twice before here and here, I could not resist one more time.

Las Causas – Jorge Luís Borges (also in English below)

Los ponientes y las generaciones.

Los días y ninguno fue el primero.

La frescura del agua en la garganta

de Adán. El ordenado Paraíso.

El ojo descifrando la tiniebla.

El amor de los lobos en el alba.

La palabra. El hexámetro. El espejo.

La Torre de Babel y la soberbia.

La luna que miraban los caldeos.

Las arenas innúmeras del Ganges.

Chuang-Tzu y la mariposa que lo sueña.

Las manzanas de oro de las islas.

Los pasos del errante laberinto.

El infinito lienzo de Penélope.

El tiempo circular de los estoicos.

La moneda en la boca del que ha muerto.

El peso de la espada en la balanza.

Cada gota de agua en la clepsidra.

Las águilas, los fastos, las legiones.

César en la mañana de Farsalia.

La sombra de las cruces en la tierra.

El ajedrez y el álgebra del persa.

Los rastros de las largas migraciones.

La conquista de reinos por la espada.

La brújula incesante. El mar abierto.

El eco del reloj en la memoria.

El rey ajusticiado por el hacha.

El polvo incalculable que fue ejércitos.

La voz del ruiseñor en Dinamarca.

La escrupulosa línea del calígrafo.

El rostro del suicida en el espejo.

El naipe del tahúr. El oro ávido.

Las formas de la nube en el desierto.

Cada arabesco del calidoscopio.

Cada remordimiento y cada lágrima.

Se precisaron todas esas cosas

para que nuestras manos se encontraran.

The Causes

by Jorge Luis Borges

The sunsets and generations.

The days and none was the first.

The coolness of water in Adam's

throat. Orderly Paradise.

The eye deciphering the dark.

The love of wolves at dawn.

The word. The hexameter. The mirror.

The Tower of Babel and pride.

The moon that Chaldeans gazed at.

The innumerable sands of the Ganges.

Chuang-Tzu and the butterfly that dreams him.

The golden apples on the islands.

The steps in the wandering labyrinth.

Penelope's infinite tapestry.

The Stoics' circular time.

The coin in the dead man's mouth.

The weight of the sword on the scale.

Each drop of water in the clepsydra.

The eagles, the auspicious days, the legions.

Caesar on the morning of Pharsalia.

The shadow of the crosses over the earth.

The chess and algebra of the Persian.

The footprints of long migrations.

The conquest of kingdoms by the sword.

The relentless compass. The open sea.

The clock's echo in memory.

The king beheaded by the ax.

The incalculable dust which was armies.

The nightingale's voice in Denmark.

The calligrapher's meticulous line.

The face of the suicidal one in the mirror.

The gambler's card. Greedy gold.

The shapes of a cloud in the desert.

Every arabesque in the kaleidoscope.

Each regret and each tear.

All those things were necessary

so that our hands would meet.

Link to: Jorge Luís Borges - So that our hands would meet

Sandrine Cassini On My Red Psychiatric Couch

Thursday, March 09, 2017

Dancer, choreographer and teacher, Sandrine Cassini has been our guest now for almost two weeks. She wakes up early. I make breakfast around 7:15. She leaves for the day and returns between 4 and 5.

Today she got soaked. She told me that she has an umbrella but that she wanted to feel like someone who belongs to this city. Getting wet is part of that. She may be coming back soon to Vancouver if things work out for her. I hope she does as she has some portraits pending that I must take. Cassini has been recently in Iceland and New Zealand. She hails from Nice but she is partly Italian. For those who may be curious, she is indeed related to astronomer and mathematician Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625- 1712).

She had a terrible headache (as intelligent women statistically seem to get) so she told me she was not going to pose for portraits. But she did allow me to snap some of her legs (and those wonderful thighs of hers!). I took five photographs with my Fuji X-E1 and one Fuji FP-100C Instant Colour Film. What you see here is a scan of the print.

The psychiatric couch was an important fixture of my Robson at Granville studio for many years. It came from a retiring psychiatrist for $100 plus a $25 delivery charge. When me moved to our present Kitsilano duplex I had it re-upholstered to match the colour of our Chickering baby grand piano stool.

There is something about French-born ballerinas that is intriguing and endearing. Cassini has never lost that accent of hers. When I look at her face I feel that I am right behind Degas in the 19^th century Paris Opera Ballet. My guess is that I would have had a very large plate camera. I can dream but this snap is one I will treasure for a long time.

Link to: Sandrine Cassini On My Red Psychiatric Couch

A SPIDER sewed at night - Emily Dickinson

Wednesday, March 08, 2017

There is nothing new in photography. Everything has been done before, and usually in a much better way. But we all have to put our finger on the candle flame to find out it burns. In the same way the cliché in photography is a personal imperative no matter how many others have done it before. This certainly applies to the idea of using a gauze on a nude (be it white or black, wet or dry) to hide details that may offend. I have used gauze a few times myself to mixed results. This one, highly manipulated with Corel Paintshop Pro X2 works nicely with this lovely Emily Dickinson poem (in spite of the gnome reference.)

A SPIDER sewed at night

Without a light

Upon an arc of white.

If ruff it was of dame

Or shroud of gnome,

Himself, himself inform.

Of immortality

His strategy

Was physiognomy.