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Sunday, December 16, 2018

A Tub, Roman Catholic Guilt & Tomato Sandwiches





In many Christmas past puttering in my darkroom a few days before Christmas (if shopping all done) and after the 25th was a special and most enjoyable pastime.

This Christmas, this 2018 Christmas fills me with lots of Roman Catholic guilt. It shouldn’t be so easy and so pleasant to cross our cold and wet patio into my warm oficina. It should not be so nice too look out of the window as my scanner zips by these three Ektachromes of Virve in her tub.
The Catholic guilt is all about impending doom when I enjoy a moment of sheer bliss. That cannot go on!

I remember how many times I would clean the sparkplugs (a Sean Rossiter term for gunning a car onto the Granville Street Bridge) and enjoy the exhilearation of hearing the V-6 twin turbo of my Maserati. Within hours or days it would breakdown.

Now I can sift through my very large in quantity files and look for pictures that at one time would need the mixing of chemicals in my darkrooms. Of the colour pictures I could do nothing. I had stopped printing colour negatives and slides by the mid-80s.

Around 1999 I came up with the concept of photographing women in my tub (or theirs). I had a show with large b+w prints. But I am glad to notice here that I did take a few in colour in the beginning. Virve my subject in this threesome was one of my original tests as I tried to find a handle as to how I was going to take the photographs for the show.

Perhaps I can eliminate from my stress equation this Catholic guilt. It is fun to scan at random (after making a choice) and waiting for Rosemary to make (she does not often cook but made the offer now) some tomato sandwiches.