Voting for me is a privilege that I do not take lightly. Because I was born in Argentina upon reaching the legal age of18 while living in Mexico City and in Austin, Texas it never occurred to me to vote via absentee ballot. In those years, the late 50s politics was of no importance to me.

Then I suddenly became patriotic and I traveled to Buenos Aires in 1966 for my two year conscription in the Argentine Navy. The law then in Argentina was that those in the military could not vote.

But I did “vote” in a way I would have never predicted. I was sent with a contingent of sailors, soldiers and airforce conscripts to surround the Casa Rosada on the 28^th of June 1966. The officers in charge gave the freely elected (and very honest country doctor) Arturo Illía an hour to leave. He went home in a taxi.

The next day the junta abolished the Argentine Constitution that I had sworn to defend months before in a lovely ceremony, the political parties and pretty well declared an emergency.

Then for many years I was not able to vote because the government in my country was a dictatorship.

By the time I arrived in Vancouver I had little respect for politics. But once I became a Canadian citizen my viewpoint changed. Since then and thanks to my jobs with magazines I was able to meet and photograph many of the politicians of this country.

I fondly remember going to a local meeting at a community in which John Turner, who was running for prime minister, was the speaker. We were served coffee and doughnuts.

Today my Rosemary and I walked two blocks to vote for Vancouver municipal elections. We were met by a pleasant man wearing a loud tie and a huge smile welcoming us in. I could not have begun to explain to him that in my former country and in others in Latin America the voting places would have had soldiers with machine guns outside. The whole process was smooth and free of bureaucracy.

I believe that some members of my family have never voted. Perhaps someday they will come to understand that voting is a privilege not often had anywhere else. And it is an obligation, too.

While I don’t particularly want to tell anybody whom I voted for (that is most personal) I will make one exception. Years ago I met Jean Swanson and I was most impressed by her when I took my photograph.

Knowing more than one language can confuse and even despistar (a fine word in Spanish that sort of means “you don’t get it because you strayed from your course”.

This is why in my youth in Buenos Aires when I heard on the radio (and later on in Mexico on TV) the word odorono I never heard it in English as Odor No! but as some made-up name pronounced as the Japanese would say it (Spanish and Japanese share an alphabet of only five vowels pronounce in only one way). Odorono simply sounded like Yoko Ono and would rhyme it.

Now in 2018 as my Rosemary and I watch CNN or MSNBC around 6 in the evening I wonder what happened to the underarm deodorant ads as well as those for toothpaste, detergent and toilet paper. The ads are all about diseases that afflict the elderly (like us) plus something called Peyronie's Disease which afflicts men and makes their erect penis curved.

According to Rosemary at our age we don’t have to wear underarm deodorant or antiperspirants. She says we smell less. She also tells me that our fingernails and toenails grow more quickly. In my new diplomatic stage of my life I do not counter with how rapid nose hair and ear hair growth in men afflicts me, too.

All that is a prelude to justify me placing here a devastatingly beautiful photograph (a scan of the individual 6x7cm exposure from my contact sheet). See here for what a contact sheet is.

When I took this photograph of Caroline in 1989 for a series of photographs of women in a tub (all shot from above and not showing too many bits) my Rosemary was shocked. She told me, “You are not going to use that photograph of her with her underarm hair are you?”

I attempted to inform her that underarm hair in women was simply a tradition of the 20^th century not to show it. I explained that in Mexico women who have some Spanish blood are proud of their body hair and some don’t shave their legs. I believe that Frida Kahlo did not shave her moustache for the same reason. She wanted to assert her mixed blood.

Now I don’t think my photograph is all that shocking anymore. I just wish there were fewer ads about A1C levels with fewer American Fire chiefs advertising how happy they are and perhaps some nice tasteful ads about underarm deodorant.

As the 21st century slides away from the previous one I must find a new vocabulary and lose or purposely forget my old.

Take the photographic contact sheet. I do believe that remnants of the idea exist in some digital photography programs.

The beginning of the use of contact in photography was the idea of the contact print. Photographers in the latter part of the 19th century had big cameras. Many in the 20^th did, too. So suppose you had a four by five inch negative. You would place in in contact with photographic paper and then expose it to light. The fully developed and fixed print was called a contact print. For a decent contact print that negative had to be perfect as there was little darkroom manipulation that could be done as is the case when the negative is projected from an enlarger.

Now with the advent of the 35mm camera, six strips of six (36 exposures in all) would be placed in a special glass carrier and then sandwiched with a sheet of 8x10 inch photographic paper.In the darkroom a short exposure of light from the enlarger would do the trick.

That was a contact sheet. 

Sometimes, now that I no longer have a darkroom, I scan those 35mm or 6x7cm format with my Epson and get a pretty good facsimile of a contact sheet.

Important in that past century was the loupe. This was a device that you would place on a contact sheet to determine which exposure was worth printing and which one was not because yes were closed.

In this blog I show three contact sheets. One I consider to be as perfect a contact sheet as I ever shot. It is of Kimberly Klass. I used contrasty Hollywood type of lighting. The second contact sheet of Canadian novelist Robertson Davies was spotted in my blog by a designer in Barcelona. She was young as she asked me to scan and send to her (I was well paid) the “narrative of 9 pictures of the writer”. I do not believe she had ever seen a contact sheet before.

In my long interest in portraiture I have photographed beautiful people and ugly people. The ugly have been in a minority as I have always wanted to photograph beauty and to show it.

Of late I have noticed that the stock of Victoria’s Secret has plummeted. The reason being given is that the company has yet to adapt to the fact that a woman’s concept of beauty is now distancing itself from red underwear and wanting to look like a model strutting on a fashion ramp.

My idea of attractive never drifts much from the idea that when in doubt, silk, satin, pearls and fishnets will do the trick for this old man.

I have a nasty streak which I enjoy playing with the man who cuts my hair (is the word style now a word of that past century?). He is always talking about lovely ladies. I keep telling him that he must avoid both words and simply say “beautiful woman.” And then I further warn him to not even attempt to use the word “girl” ever unless he is talking about the ones that sell cookies.

So in spite of my ripe 76 years I believe that I have progressed with the concepts of this century and the rules of political correctness.

In these many years that I have photographed beautiful women the one in this blog is one whom, alas, I have no recollection of her name. After 1980 I had the good habit of writing a name and a date on my envelope filing system for negatives.

She was the friend of a handsome man we called “Black Jim” as he was indeed quite black. I met them on Wreck Beach so I never did get their surnames. Surnames were not usually exchanged on the beach.

I took many photographs of her, experimenting with a style I had yet to get and an approach I had yet to nail down. I remember that she asked me to take some photographs of her with clothes on in my studio.

At the time I had been rebuffed by the Fashion Editor of Vancouver Magazine who had told me that I had a future in portraiture but not in fashion. “You simply have no attitude for fashion,” he told me.

Desde el 20 de septiembre se exhiben en la mítica galería Vermeer (Suipacha 1168) cerca de 40 obras colaborativas e individuales de los tres destacados artistas argentinos.

En los anales del arte argentino el nombre de Juan Manuel Sánchez (1930-2016) estará por siempre asociado al movimiento Espartaco (1959 – 1968), aquel que a través de un muralismo autóctono pero también de la utilización de medios, soportes y temáticas diversas promovieron la unión indisociable entre arte y compromiso social. Luego de su exilio durante la última dictadura militar, la trayectoria artística de Sánchez se expande, y un nuevo público logra acceder a su obra gracias a los murales realizados en los dos países donde se radica: primero España, luego Canadá. Es en este último país, más precisamente en la ciudad de Vancouver, donde se produce uno de los períodos menos conocidos y a la vez más inspirados en su vida artística, fruto de la colaboración con dos de los más grandes artistas de esta época con los que comparte también su lugar de nacimiento: la artista visual Nora Patrich (que además fue su mujer) y el fotógrafo Alex Waterhouse-Hayward. Parte de este trabajo producido a comienzos de este siglo se expone por primera vez en Argentina bajo el nombre de “Nostalgia de Norte a Sur” en la mítica galería Vermeer (Suipacha 1168).

 Compuesta por 38 obras, la mayoría de ellas corresponden a “colaboraciones” entre los tres artistas (dicho término en español es utilizado en el blog de Alex Waterhouse-Hayward escrito enteramente en inglés). La muestra también se propone abordar el trabajo en solitario del reconocido fotógrafo argentino-canadiense, siendo éste su debut en una sala porteña. A su vez, las imágenes de Waterhouse-Hayward constituyen el hilo conductor que unen el trabajo de los tres creadores ya que son la única constante a lo largo de la exposición.

Cabe destacar que algunos de los trabajos colaborativos formaron parte de una exhibición en Vancouver a comienzos de este siglo en la Simon Patrich Gallery bajo el nombre de “Argentine Nostalgia”. El nuevo título, “Nostalgia de Norte a Sur”, deja en evidencia que la nostalgia que los tres artistas intentaron exorcizar a través de sus obras viene de muy lejos, de una punta a otra del continente.

El primer grupo de obras responden a trabajos realizados a partir de fragmentos fotográficos. Es decir, que la imagen elegida al azar por Waterhouse-Hayward es el germen del que nace la inspiración de Juan Manuel Sánchez y Nora Patrich que continúan la misma a modo de cadáver exquisito. Se destaca la serie compuesta a partir de fotos del cielo raso de la Vancouver Public Library: “Un libro y una flor” (Sánchez/Waterhouse-Hayward) y “Por los Ojos” (Patrich/Waterhouse-Hayward). En la primera, Sánchez hace uso de tres de estas imágenes para crear el conjunto de estambres de una flor en las manos de una de sus emblemáticas figuras femeninas. Por su parte, Patrich las utiliza con el fin de crear los ojos de un rostro femenino. No es de extrañar que sea la mujer el eje central sobre el que giran estos trabajos. De hecho, constituye la conexión más fuerte en la producción artística individual de los tres artistas. Sin embargo, en este punto uno podría preguntarse si solamente se trata de una nostalgia por las mujeres argentinas. En realidad, es mucho más expansiva pero sólo a través de ellas se proponen evocarla. Tal es el caso de “Doña Flor” (Patrich/Waterhouse-Hayward), que deja atrás el surrealismo de las obras anteriores. Desde un fragmento fotográfico de la parte frontal de un cuerpo femenino con un abanico colorado, Nora Patrich imagina y compone el resto del cuerpo. El título alude a la famosa novela de Jorge Amado y podría suponerse como una alegoría entre el pasado perdido y el futuro ineludible y de la convivencia de ambos tiempos en uno. Es al menos una de las lecturas que pueden realizarse ya que la búsqueda de la nostalgia argentina en cada obra resultaría una tarea inútil. En primer lugar, esta añoranza constituyó el motor por el cual tres artistas argentinos se reunieron en la otra punta del continente para trabajar juntos.

Las mujeres son también el centro del segundo grupo de obras expuestas: las fotoperformances.  Se sabe que frente a un hecho artístico efímero la fotografía ocupa un lugar destacado, ya que actúa como testimonio vivo de una acción que sólo puede sobrevivir a través de su documentación. En el caso particular de las fotoperformances, la fotografía pasa a ocupar un lugar importante en el proceso creativo, debido a que se trata de acciones artísticas que fueron realizadas con el fin de ser fotografiadas y de esta manera perdurar en el tiempo. A diferencia de Yves Klein que cubría el cuerpo de sus modelos con su famoso azul para que dejaran su huella corporal impresa sobre el lienzo, las modelos de Sánchez, Patrich y Waterhouse-Hayward están pintadas como sujetos extraídos del lienzo. Estas pinturas vivas se destacan además porque se puede apreciar el trabajo en conjunto de los tres artistas. Por ejemplo en “Julia”, donde Sánchez aparece junto a una de sus modelos, “Santosantas”, también conocida bajo el nombre de “Santas Conchitas”, donde los modelos representan a una santa pagana, y “Carmencita e Itzel”, cuya impresión sobre una cartulina plateada le otorga tres dimensiones.

Por otro lado, la nostalgia ocupa un lugar más consciente en las fotografías individuales de Alex Waterhouse-Hayward. Con excepción de sus icónicas imágenes de Liv Ullmann y Werner Herzog, todas ellas evocan diferentes hechos, lugares y objetos de índole nacional y expresan un mismo sentimiento por la patria añorada. Obras como “El diván psiquiátrico” (intervenida por Nora Patrich), “Los Granaderos”, “Recoleta”, “Alfonsina y el mar” y “El Hornero”. Es importante mencionar el hecho de que algunas de las historias detrás de estos trabajos pueden encontrarse en el blog del fotógrafo (alexwaterhousehayward.com) que funciona como una suerte de epígrafe ampliado.

Para terminar es menester regresar a la trayectoria artística de Juan Manuel Sánchez. Es posible que uno tienda a pensar en estos trabajos realizados a partir de la experimentación artística como un alejamiento a los postulados espartaqueanos que pretendían construir un arte social meramente revolucionario, con una marcada presencia de sus raíces argentinas. Sin embargo, es preciso recordar que el Grupo Espartaco también apoyó la experimentación artística a través de acciones, conferencias y afiches. Y después de todo, ¿acaso no es la nostalgia parte de la idiosincrasia argentina?