My grandmother often said to me, “La ignorancia es atrevida,” or “ignorance is daring.” Another of her favourites (related to a 19^th century Spanish rejection of Darwin), “Asomó el rabo.” This translates to something like, “That person is so ignorant that his tail (a monkey’s) is showing.”

I can remember very well two of my personal showing of my monkey’s tail.

In the early 60s a friend of mine who knew a lot about music (he liked Ella Fitzgerald a lot and had all her records) asked me, “Have you heard Carmina Burana?” I answered, “No, who is she?”

In the early 70s while teaching high school in Mexico City my students asked me if I had ever heard Alice Cooper. My answer was identical to the one above.

My students were mature for their age and did not laugh at me. I was told that we would trade. I would introduce them to my music and they to theirs. I was invited to a party. The put on record and told me it was one of their favourite bands. The band was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. While I thought they were good I forgot all about them. I had no idea who any of them were much less that Young, was Neil Young and that he was Canadian.

Two months ago I decided to end all these years of my Neil Young ignorance. Perhaps I was stirred into action by a CBC Radio This is That segment on an American producing a Neil Young film biography.

 This is That segment on Neil Young

I went to London Drugs and in their very good CD rack I went to the Ys and found Neil Young’s Greatest Hits. I immediately played it when I got home and fell in love with Ohio.

I have never met Neil Young and I have never heard him perform live but there is something about his singing, his songs, his guitar playing, his harmonica that I find unique.

Since I am not a musician I took Les Wiseman’s double advice, “Write about that which you know and if you don’t consult experts.” But the fact is that I asked four people, one at a time, if they would write something for my blog in which they would explain the special significance in the scheme of things Canadian of Neil Young. They prevaricated and they they turned me down.

Neil Young is three years younger than I am. But perhaps he might die and when he does I am sure that everybody will be contributing their brief moments of contact with greatness in social media. These are the same people getting ready their social media, ambulance chasing little obituaries for the any day, now, demise of Keith Richards.

But until Young dies and if I am still around will it only be then that I will find out what makes this man unique?

This is why I will attempt in this little essay to see if I can find my own answers.

It wasn’t until the year 2000 that I discovered (what should have been obvious) that to feel nostalgia for a place you have to be somewhere else. It was in that year that the two Argentine painters Juan Manuel Sánchez, his wife Nora Patrich and I explored our personal nostalgia for Argentina and in particular Buenos Aires.

If you have served your country (and I did as a conscript), fell in love with two women while there in Argentina, swore allegiance to a flag and constitution you would have thought that I feel deeply as an Argentine. But that was not the case. For years I have felt Mexican because I lived there for many years and American because I spent the formative teen years of my life in Austin. My sense of nationality is a tad confused. My former mentor and friend, Raul Guerrero Montemayor considered himself “híbrido” because of his mixed origins, education and the fact he spoke more than 10 languages.

So I can safely state that I feel Argentine, Mexican and American because I am in Canada.

I married my Canadian wife Rosemary in Mexico City in 1968 and it was only then when she taught me about Canada. I knew nothing until then.

When we moved with our two daughters to Vancouver in 1975 my first hint of belonging to this country happened because of the CBC. The CBC was the first entity to employ me as a photographer. It was while listening to the CBC that I found out that Newfoundland was pronounced New- found- land. It felt good to pronounce it the way they did.

My further venture into feeling Canadian was learning to dance the Argentine tango in Vancouver and having people observe me and ask me about my native Buenos Aires. Somehow there was an inkling of being Canadian when  explained.

But here is where I go out on a limb. Argentine tango is music of a city, Buenos Aires. Few foreigners will know that outside of Buenos Aires the music heard is called folklore. It has no connection with the tango. And yet many say that the tango was imported from Uruguay.

Listening to any tango transports me to Buenos Aires, to my youth and to my two girlfriends. Listening to Piazzolla is even more direct to my brain. Is there any other music in any other part of the world that is of one city?

Reading Jorge Luís Borges (all of it) and Julio Cortázar (most of it) is to be in Buenos Aires, to recognize the street names and the places in the stories. Are there any other writers anywhere else that wrote about only one city? Argentines call that "costumbrismo."

This brings me to the fact that while I met and photographed Leonard Cohen (but none of the famous female Canadian singers) I find him less Canadian and much more part of the world. We Canadians (and I am one sometimes!) should understand that Cohen is not only ours.

But what is it about the sound of Young, his harmonica, his voice can be derivative of his friend Dylan and yet?

There is something about his sound (and Ohio is a good example of that) that can only be understood deep in the heart and mind by someone from here – someone who is Canadian.

And yes, because of Neil Young I can truly say that I am Canadian and I can easily make believe I am somewhere else and that I experience nostalgia for my country.

Canada

When I read Gordon McIntyre’s article on architects Norman Hotson and Joost Bakker in today’s hard copy Vancouver Sun I was pleased. I was pleased too to understand why since my arrival to Vancouver in 1975 we have always been subscribed to the Sun. It is our city newspaper.

It was only a couple of days ago that ex art director, design director, editor, publisher and magazine owner and now a musician, Bob Mercer had a Spanish tortilla (an omelette) in my Kitsilano home. We discussed the soon-to-be gone Westender.

Soon there will be no competition for the Vancouver Sun and the Georgia Straight. We wondered why those two publications, and in particular the Straight don’t go  for really large photographs (well taken and with style) as much of the advertisers of the Westender will be looking for another place to spend their money. I will quote Mercer here, “A publication about the arts [the Straight?] should look good.”

We talked about the death of Sean Rossiter has left our city with no real  voice in writing about architecture and city politics.

Sometime in the late 70s I photographed Norman Hotson outside his office on the yet to be developed Yaletown.

The picture here of Norman Hotson and Joost Bakker is one of many photographs that I took for Western Living (this one) and Vancouver Magazine. In most cases the writers were either Sean Rossiter or Kerry McPhedran. Most of the other architects I photographed either died or moved to better hunting grounds.

Mercer and I wondered how endangered is the profession of the publicist. Sooner or later these few remaining publicists will figure out that an intelligent use of social media is about all that is left in town.

While I have known many photographers in my career as a magazine photographer in Vancouver I cannot generalize about “our” habits. I can only assert about myself and those reading this can take it from there and decide if other photographers have the same habits.

As a photographer I believe I have mostly been set in my ways for periods of time. I have been through the print in high contrast, print in split contrast, shoot only with Kodak b+w Infrared Film, use one light, use many lights, use available light and so on.

I think that as a photographer I am a paradox of being conservative while also taking chances.

Laziness or an inability to go further in my methods of shooting made me early one to say I did not want to shoot with a 4x5 camera (I did once) as I did not want to see the world upside down. Laziness made me loose total interest in a pre-digital technique (very complicated it was) called posterization. 

I was never interested in true techniques of the 19^th century. I did not want to lose my hair (lots of mercury vapour) with Daguerreotypes nor was I interested in glass plates or Talbot Types (paper negatives sandwiched further to make paper positives).

I was curious enough to use primitive box cameras (never the lousy modern Holga) or swivel-lens panoramics. I have all three that were the most popular, the Widelux, the Horizont and the huge Noblex.

If anything, any diversity I ever showed was in lighting. I even shot the strangely named Day-Glo Abortions with black lighting.

Day Glo Abortions

Because I am aware of those ancient 10^th century photographic methods I have a memory to what they looked like. I can imitate some of them and purists can scoff all they want.

The reason that I don’t care is that all the time that I have been taking photographs with whatever lights and equipment I had at my disposal I was also attempting to achieve the better portrait. I am not interested in a still life or in landscapes.

This past two weeks showed me a couple of items that told me I have been on the right track. In a brand new book Avedon-Something Personal by Norma Stevens [Avedon’s studio manager] and Steven M.L. Aronson I read this:

…until the end Avedon was pavonine and recessive, autocratic and inhibited, everyone’s best friend and utterly inscrutable. It doesn’t add up. It can’t. It’s a portrait, and as Avedon’s most famous saying goes, “All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

When I pursue a portrait I am looking for what I consider (most subjective this is) the essence of the person my camera is pointed at. I am aware that the person posing is only showing what I am allowed to see and only in rare occasions will my subject remove all veils and walls. I attempt to portray in a portrait (a single one) the essence in Platonic terms.

This portrait of Bob Mercer that I took today (with my iPhone3G is my take on what makes him be Bob Mercer. He would probably laugh at this.

The second interesting revelation was finding this article in the Guardian where I found out that Émile Zola was a prolific photographer. One of the portraits, a self-portrait that caught my eye was one called a cyanotype. This method of printing photographs extended well into the 20^th century and there may be still some artistes who do it.

Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print. Engineers used the process well into the 20th century as a simple and low-cost process to produce copies of drawings, referred to as blueprints. The process uses two chemicals: ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide.

Wikipedia

I wrote about the process here.

Now with a little bit of useful Photoshop knowledge and the use of my $50 Corel Paint Shop Pro X2 photo program I can make and prints (inkjets) that are close copies.

And why not? After although I am a conservative on this stuff I am not  a purist.

Rosemary and I today drove to Bellingham very early in the morning (to avoid that Richmond tunnel problem that begins around 3pm). The purpose of our trip was to buy very sweet, junk breakfast cereals for our son-in-law and younger granddaughter (they should know better).

But we also take advantage that Bellingham has La Gloria that stocks, not only daily made tortillas but all kinds of Mexican groceries not available in Vancouver. And of course my frugal wife insists I fill-up with gasoline at the Costco gas station.

I must plainly write here that in previous years it was fun to drive to the United States. The fact that the Canadian Dollar is low in comparison to the American Dollar is not the reason. I simply do not want to buy anything be it electronic, photographic or clothes at Macy’s. I buy now very few books and check out the books I really want to read from our Vancouver Public Library.

I wrote about the thrill of the first time I went to the UShere. At one time Rosemary and I loved going to Seattle and spending the night and driving back. We always managed to listen to Marion McPartland’s Piano Bar on the radio. All those pleasures have faded.  

Driving home Rosemary reminded that my Sony linear tracking turntable had been repaired. We picked it up. The pleasant gentleman at the repair shop asked me if I wanted to buy a new Stanton stylus as the one in my present cartridge while good might not be so good in a few years. Since I bought the turntable (used) at a Sony Store around 1990 I figured that when I go to where my ears will no longer be functioning, one of my daughters might want to play records. I bought the stylus.

We arrived home where we were greeted by Casi-Casi. I connected my turntable and immediately plaid my circa 1970 Turnabout TVS-34029 Vivaldi Gloria in D major, RV 589.

It felt good to be back in Canada and to listen to a preview of the glorious Gloria we are going to listen to live at the Chan with an all-female cast of singers and musicians on the 23d.

For more info on that Early Music Vancouver Gloria:

The Vivaldi Gloria, Alice Cooper, Igor Stravinski & 50 Elephants

Baroque Pearls & José Benito de Churriguera