The Argentine Navy (Armada República Argentina) has lost all hope of finding alive the 43 male and one female crew members of the 80s vintage diesel electric submarine ARA San Juan.

During the Malvinas War I saw on my TV an Argentine Skyhawk zooming across Goose Green suddenly explode into a puff of white. I was not sorry for the pilot. He was an officer who knew his life was on the line. But I felt terrible since that Skyhawk was one of my planes! I had translated the maintenance and operating manuals from English into Spanish in 1966 when the fighters had been purchased by the ARA from the US Navy.

With the loss of the submarine crew members I have revisited the events of that war but somehow this time I feel the loss of those very human sailors. Why?

It had to do with seeing some young Argentine sailors at a press conference by the ARA spokesman. Their uniforms were like mine. They were in their summer whites as it is summer in Argentina. In my portrait here I am wearing my winter blues. Those sailors looked as young as I was. It hit home in a way that reading of US sailors dying in a recent collision of their destroyer did not. For my marineros their future has been denied.

One of the few good laws that Argentine President Carlos Menem (1989-1999) passed was the ending of the military draft. I felt so sorry for those young, severely untrained conscripts who died in that useless Malvinas War killed by seasoned and well paid professional soldiers.

Of that war Jorge Luís Borges said, "Two bald men arguing who owned the comb."

This would mean that the young sailors on board the San Juan were there on their own volition. And yet I grieve. I cannot eliminate from my being that pride of being from a country that I no longer live in but is part of that essence that makes me whom I am.


 F A R E W E L L - Pablo Neruda
DESDE el fondo de ti, y arrodillado,
un niño triste, como yo, nos mira.
Por esa vida que arderá en sus venas
tendrían que amarrarse nuestras vidas.
Por esas manos, hijas de tus manos,
tendrían que matar las manos mías.
Por sus ojos abiertos en la tierra
veré en los tuyos lágrimas un día.
YO NO lo quiero, Amada.
Para que nada nos amarre
que no nos una nada.
Ni la palabra que aromó tu boca,
ni lo que no dijeron las palabras.
Ni la fiesta de amor que no tuvimos,
ni tus sollozos junto a la ventana.

AMO el amor de los marineros
que besan y se van.
Dejan una promesa.
No vuelven nunca más.
En cada puerto una mujer espera:
los marineros besan y se van.
Una noche se acuestan con la muerte
en el lecho del mar.
AMO el amor que se reparte
en besos, lecho y pan.
Amor que puede ser eterno
y puede ser fugaz.
Amor que quiere libertarse
para volver a amar.
Amor divinizado que se acerca
Amor divinizado que se va.)
YA NO se encantarán mis ojos en tus ojos,
ya no se endulzará junto a ti mi dolor.
Pero hacia donde vaya llevaré tu mirada
y hacia donde camines llevarás mi dolor.
Fui tuyo, fuiste mía. Qué más? Juntos hicimos
un recodo en la ruta donde el amor pasó.
Fui tuyo, fuiste mía. Tu serás del que te ame,
del que corte en tu huerto lo que he sembrado yo.
Yo me voy. Estoy triste: pero siempre estoy triste.
Vengo desde tus brazos. No sé hacia dónde voy.
...Desde tu corazón me dice adiós un niño.
Y yo le digo adiós.

Krisztina Szabó

The Messiah - A Roasted Chestnut to Perfection

By all accounts of the four (one in White Rock, one in West Vancouver and two at the Vancouver Playhouse) of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra’s performances of Handel’s Messiah the one on Friday, December 1 was the very best. It was ably directed by the PBO’s Alexander Weimann.

I can attest that Kris Kwapis’s trumpet was superb. This is a very difficult instrument to play.

But the best part was the fact that many musicians have told me (some have played in over 250 performances) one of the four soloists is not always up to par to the other three. 

I had no idea who the soprano, Yulia Van Doren was. I was most pleasantly surprised by a singer with a sweet disposition, lovely smile and a perfect complexion that somehow all was the cream on her terrific singing.

The other three singers I know (in person). There was baritone Tyler Duncan with that incredible diction, presence and a volume that could fill any stadium.

There was Charles Daniels, one tenor that cannot only sing but act, too. I know he likes to drink craft beer. That can only be a plus to his talent. I can only conclude that the reason we in our backwoods Vancouver get to enjoy the talent of Daniels is EMV’s (Messiah was produced by EMV) Artistic and Executive Director Matthew White. As American say RHIP (rank has its privileges). My friend, bassist Curtis Daily said that Daniels used some extraordinary ornamentation that he (Daily) had not ever heard before.

It was mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó who might have diverted the Three Wise Kings from their holy quest as her star shone so bright.

In the Messiah Part 2, the alto Air “He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” that I was wowed by an acting performance of power and grief that was absolutely believable (but unbelievable it was that good). I can only guess that the passion of Hungary and a bit of that Tokay wine run in her veins.

Curtis Daily(over dinner with Argentine wine) after that December 1 performance) attempted to explain to me that Handel (Daily believes) purposely begins the Air in E flat major. It is a difficult key and it puts a particular strain on the orchestra. It went all over my head but the fact is that the orchestra was good at mastering Handel's trap.

I have only attended two Messiahs in my life. The previous one was a conventional one at the Orpheum with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Another one in 1979 almost killed until now any desire to listen to one more Hallelujah Chorus. Besides its use in TV commercial jingles the last straw was 1979 disco version that I witnessed in shock at the gay Luv-a-Fair in which this wet-behind the ears Burnaby resident watched men with moustaches dancing together! I have learned to become a man of our contemporary world since then.

For any future marketing of this Handel work I believe that there should be more stress given to the solo performances and not to that chorus. Why do people stand up for it? 

But there was one highlight for me in the Vancouver Cantata Singers. I spotted tenor Clinton Stoffberg who not too long ago played both (very well) Christ and the Evangelist St. John in a compact production of that Bach work.

I looked at the orchestra and counted 18 people I have photographed before. Surely this must mean that was in a concert among friends!

Marina Hasselberg - December 2 2017

 Of special interest to me was to see that the local cellist Marina Hasselberg was starting in style with her first performance of the Messiah (well second, after the previous day’s performance in George Zukerman’s White Rock) as a new member of the PBO.

This blog should be an easy thing. It is not because there is so much in my head that I want to place here.I will attempt to make it succinct.

Olena (formerly the beautiful woman with the blue hair) came today to pose for my friend baroque bassist Curtis Daly and this obosolete & redundant & retired photographer. My heart sank while Olena was making herself up (she is superb at this) as she made a comment that people at age 75 were much too old to change. She said this with her back to me. I signalled my shock to Daily by pointing at myself and nodding negatively.

And yet this inflexible old 75-year-old man with the help of a support staff (the men at Leo’s Camera) and my friend Paul Leisz  modernized me. Leisz pushed me into the 21^st century with computers and knowledge that normally is over my head but he manages to explain down to my level.

This old man still has some tricks up his sleeve, after all my grandmother used to repeat a refrán from the Argentine literary work  Martín Fierro where the old man el Viejo Vizcacha gives his young ward a piece of advice:

“Fijate bien lo que hablo: El diablo sabe por diablo. Pero más sabe por viejo".

This translates to: “The devil knows because he is the devil, but more so because he is an old man.”

There seems to be a present obsession with photographic equipment that sidesteps the idea of taking good photographs. These new cameras are super sharp and the colours are beyond the colours of Technicolor. There seems to be a backlash to things digital. So film is slowly coming back. Some of these photographers will soon find out some of the weaknesses of film if you don’t know what to do with it. These are the same people who will soon be bothered by the scratchy sound of brand new records on their middle of the road (if not cheap units that are now called record turntables). I have a long memory for brand new records that had built-in scratches and passages with shaky distortion.

I do own a very good Sony linear-tracking turntable and my records sound pretty good.

I love film particularly b+w film which I can process in my Kitsilano home. But I no longer have a darkroom so I have opted for a very good Canon inkjet printer.

More and more my digital files from my Fuji X-E1 and my brand new X-E3 (I am currently trying to cope with the complexity of its “improvements” over my X-E1) dictate that the only way to get hard copy is with that Canon inkjet..

This old man knows that many of the best photographs have been the product of accidents. If the photographer is able to back step on the accident in question then these delightful accidents can be repeated at will.

Some five years ago when I was teaching at Focal Point a class called The Contemporary Portrait Nude I felt that as the instructor I could not take advantage of the situation and take my own photographs with my students. But I could and did every once in a while snap some pictures with my iPhone 3G. The central and most important button of the unit gave out so I retired the phone and purchased a new and better Galaxy.

The 3G I put away until I recently looked at some of those nude snaps. I knew that there was a style to be seen in the limitations of the phone. These limitations could either be magnified or minimized and both methods were stellar in my opinion. I had my 3G repaired. I took out the SIM card to convert it into a dedicated Apple Camera 3G. Here are the pictures I took of Olena today.

I know that the Viejo Vizcacha would have been delighted.

Fuji X-E3

In the late 80s Vancouver Magazine writer Les Wiseman and I went to New York City to get work. We thought we were “la mama de Tarzán”, Mexican Spanish for we thought we were terrific.

We were able to see the not yet legendary Adam Moss at Esquire who told us he liked our stuff but that his magazine had no interest in Canada and its Prime Minister Joe Clark.

Before we could go to Rolling Stone I had to make an appointment with the art director by phone. I was asked, “Do you have any pictures of rock bands performing?” I knew this was a trap so I answered, “No.” This was the art directors method of separating those who shot bands singing with microphones and those who got to go back stage. I was given the appointment.

At Rolling Stone, Wiseman and I noticed that there were many youngish men with glasses that looked like Elvis Costello. Ample reason why the magazine always liked him!

The art director and editors looked at our stuff and liked it but told us, “We are not interested in Tom Cochran and Red Rider.

We were able to secure some work for a then hip but low paying rag called Trowser Press. With our tail between our legs we left the large pond and back to our small one.

To this day I have the opinion that shooting bands while performing is like looking at pictures of sunsets, fireworks and city scapes. Once you have seen a couple you have seen them all.

Here are a couple of pictures I took for the Straight in 2004 when they expected original photographs and paid photographers not too badly. This was before the handout photo.

For these shots the photo editors expected me to photograph several sets of bands, three at a time at some location that was one of the band’s choice.

Note that in one of the photographs you can see the other. This was before I could handle Photoshop so I stuck a little photo on the right hand corner.

The trick to any of these photographs is to impose your own personal style, demand some posing and look carefully at every face before pressing the shutter.

These days I hardly ever see a rock photograph that makes me think, “wow”. My guess is that many make the motion and no more.