Marina Hasselberg - That Foolproof Muse
Saturday, July 14, 2018
As a working commercial photographer I rarely made mistakes
or had a situation where I would go back to Vancouver Magazine, and other magazines to tell them
that the big fish had gotten away. The reason is that I had two of everything
in my studio or on assignment. As a photographer I was aware of Patterson’s Law
that stipulated that Murphy was an optimist.
Now in the waning days of my life when I work in my little
Kits studio I trip over cords and have a hard time finding stuff. I keep two
flashlights so that I can look into my Mamiya lens to adjust the f-stop.
Anybody watching me in action would use that that wonderful
word shmuck to describe me.
Yesterday the indomitable and glamorous cello player
Marina Hasselberg posed for me. The reason is that I had requested her to come over as my previously good shots ( see here) were suddenly out of date as right after I took them she went for a severe Marlon Brando as a peroxide SS Officer in The Young Lions.
The idea that a musician should look calming and boring is an item of the past century. Perhaps in that past century Pinchas Zukerman changed that idea by posing in a jean jacket which is the cover of his fine rendition of Hadyn's Symphony 21 (my fave).
Hasselberg cannot be pinned down for doing this, or that in our Vancouver musical scene. She uses a baroque cello (no end pin) a modern cello and often she plugs it in to pedals and amplifiers.
Thus I do not know of any musician in this city who has the power to inspire not only with her music but with her look and presence.
I managed (with her around it is impossible to fail) to take
many wonderful photographs until I indicated to her that I wanted to use my
ring flash. This was a total disaster as the two-prong flash cord very quickly
failed and it was impossible to make the unit flash. And I had no Plan-B. I was
disappointed. We celebrated with a spritzy ice cold Argentine rosé.
This morning I looked at all those black rectangles of
pictures that represented the ring flash failure.
But behold! I tweaked here and there and the result amply
proves that some accidents happen for good reasons.
Love & Those Fishnets
Friday, July 13, 2018
In the field of textiles, fishnet is hosiery with an open,
diamond-shaped knit; it is most often used as a material for stockings, tights,
or bodystockings. Fishnet is available in a multitude of colors, although it is
most often sported in traditional matte black. Fishnet is commonly worn on the
legs and arms by practitioners of goth and punk fashion, but is also commonly
worn by the mainstream as a fashion statement. Generally considered to be a
sexy garment, it may serve as a component of sexual fetishism. Fishnets are
used mostly as a type of undergarment, and in as much as it defines curves by
applying a grid close to the body it generally accentuates the wearer's
muscular definition.
1. Fishnets
2. Fishnets
3. Fishnets
4. Fishnets
5. Fishnets
6. Fishnets
7. Fishnets
On Thursday, July 13, the sports section of my daily
delivered NY Times featured a large photograph of Serena Williams defeating Julia
Görges at Wimbledon. In the photograph Williams was clearly wearing fishnet
stockings.
Anybody who may have been following my blog in the last few
years might know that I have a special fondness for this item of hosiery. I
have written about fishnets many times (above links).
I immediately went to Google and punched in Serena Williams,
fishnets and found this and this. The latter essay explains that her fishnets
might have a health purpose.
It was in 1996 (here) that I first went to a Pacific Baroque
Orchestra concert. The cellist (I have forgotten her name) was wearing
exquisite black pumps and fishnets. It was then and there that my interest in
them became a full blown fetish!
I am happy to report that cellist Marina Hasselberg is
continuing this fine tradition with fierce enthusiasm.
Deficiencies into Virtues
Thursday, July 12, 2018
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| Jorge Luís Borges & Adolfo Bioy Casares |
My life in this 21st century brings me some surprises that I
could never have predicted in that past century that made me.
A few months ago I went into my phone to search in Google
the latest information on the Argentine submarine that never surfaced and was
never found. I also make queries about photography.
So now my Google feed in my phone includes several (and
interesting they are) about the politics and financial troubles of my native
Argentina. There are countless articles related to the fact that because I own
a Fuji X-E1 and an X-E3 I might be tempted to buy a brown one.
But this essay intrigued me and I read it in its entirety as
it is about two Argentine authors that admire, Jorge Luís Borges and Adolfo
Bioy Casares.
But, I read almost at the end something that seemed to be
so uncomfortingly contemporary.
“Bostrom [successor
to the murdered head of state] and his friends used a popular and sometimes
coarse form of speech which was praised by their followers because of its
supposed simplicity. It was said that its use was proof of an open frankness
and that it constituted an authentic point of contact with the common people.
The truth of the matter was that they spoke in that fashion because they knew
of no other. It was, after all, a familiar practice to turn all deficiencies
into virtues. If an individual was basically ignorant, he was praised for his
common sense and his ability to skirt abstract problems; if he was hasty and
coarse he was admired for his frankness and his dislike of dilatory techniques;
if he was indecisive and slow, he was applauded for his caution.”
This is a 1972 translation of Argentine writer Manuel Peyrou’s 1949 work, El estruendo de las rosas, was translated into English by Donald A. Yates and
published by Herder Publishers in 1972 as Thunder
of Roses: A Detective Novel.
The writer of the essay on Bioy Casares and Borges cites
the appearance of General Don Domingo Perón who while had risen to power in
1946 he was consolidating power by 1949.The quote above might refer to Peron's loved "descamisados" or shirtless ones whom he gave his speeches from the balcony of the Casa Rosada.
I lived those years (I was 8 in 1950) but I had a hazy
idea of what was going on. I could hear Perón and Evita shouting their speeches
over the radio from our neighbour’s (Peronists) loud radio. My grandmother
would tell us of neighbourhood women complaining there was not meat at the
butcher shop and how somehow these women were not seen again. Perhaps they had
moved. I don’t know. But my 1954 my grandmother knew something was going to
happen and we moved to Mexico City.
A Portrait of a Lady
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
When I opened the door today for Astrid I was taken aback
not only by her very English accent but also by her quiet elegance. It struck
me that here was a lady and that I was back in that century when the word “lady”
was not seen as an insult or a deprecative and sexist epithet.
After taking one single photograph I thought of a poem by
my fave American doctor/poet.
William Carlos Williams, "Portrait of a Lady"
(first published in the Dial, August 1920)
Your thighs are appletrees
whose blossoms touch the sky.
Which sky? The sky
where Watteau hung a lady's
slipper. Your knees
are a southern breeze -- or
a gust of snow. Agh! what
sort of man was Fragonard?
-- As if that answered
anything. -- Ah, yes. Below
the knees, since the tune
drops that way, it is
one of those white summer days,
the tall grass of your ankles
flickers upon the shore --
Which shore? --
the sand clings to my lips --
Which shore?
Agh, petals maybe. How
should I know?
Which shore? Which shore?
-- the petals from some hidden
appletree -- Which shore?
I said petals from an appletree.
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| Fragonard, “The Swing,” 1767. Oil on canvas. Wallace Collection |
That Tina Modotti Mug at MOMA - Not
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
In January
when Rosemary and I visited New York City we bought a couple of enameled pewter
mugs at MOMA with Frida Kahlo’s image on them. They were made in Mexico. We
bought them as pasalubums (Tagalog
for gifts you buy abroad to bring back to relatives and friends) for one of our
Mexican-born daughters.
I believe
that by now we should find other Mexican female icons with feminist views. One
I have written about is Nahui Olin. Another is Italian-born Tina Modotti. The
latter singlehandedly photographed in the 20s the murals (and sometimes
including the muralists) of Diego Rivera, Clemente Orozco and David Álvaro
Siqueiros. These photographs made the Mexican muralists known to Europe and the
rest of the world.
Tina
Modotti became the lover and model of Edward Weston during his stay in Mexico
when they lived on Calle Veracruz in what is now the Colonia Condesa in Mexico
City. In his diaries Weston wrote longingly and with affection of his
sentimental and photographic relationship with Modotti.
Because
Modotti had leftist tendencies far to the left she was deported from Mexico in
1930. Somehow she turned up fighting against Franco in the Spanish Civil War
and returned to Mexico where she died in 1942 (I must find out where she is
buried!).
Sometimes I
write here on how my Argentine friends who do not speak or read English miss
out on wonderful literature that is not translated into Spanish. On the other
hand I tell my friends here in Vancouver (they have no idea of who the man is)
that I have read the complete output of Alejo Carpentier whose books I found in
Spanish at the UBC Library.
Here is an
example of a book that as far as I know has not been translated into English.
Perhaps if it ever is, I might then find some mugs with Modotti’s face on them
at MOMA.
If you have
gotten this far then I dare reproduce here a photograph I took a year after I saw the cover of Modotti’s book. It is by
San Francisco artist Ottis Oldfield dated 1933. I was inspired but tried to put a modern twist to it.
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