Katheryn

La explicación es un error bien vestido.

Rayuela – Julio Cortázar

The explanation is a well-dressed mistake.

Hopscotch – Julio Cortázar

Because of differences between my Spanish and your English, the latter part of Cortázar’s quote has a more direct secondary meaning. A vestido in Spanish is a dress so the connection to the article of female clothing is implied but not there in the translation.

In this 21^st century it is easy to put dress, the name of a poet or writer and you instantly hit poetic pay dirt.

I am neither a poet nor a writer. I am a retired, redundant, obsolete & inconsequential photographer with enough savvy (experience) to know that this photograph of Kathryn is special. It is highly erotic. In my quest (many years of it) to pin down what exactly is eroticism I believe this picture simply tells me, “You will know when you see it.”

I see it.

About that overrated little black dress 

A little red Christmas dress

Les Wiseman - 1989

In my 77 years of existence on this planet I have been lucky (I am not going to use this now hackneyed word “blessed”) to have had many mentors who pointed me in the right direction. Most were much older than I was. Besides my father (who made me a good cook) the Brothers of Holy Cross in Austin taught me history, music, theology, civics and many a lesson on how to survive this world with at least a grain of sanity. Not all my mentors were men.

My mother was one who sacrificed everything to give me an education. My wife Rosemary was a pioneer in knowing when to leave a country or when to buy a house. My grandmother Lolita gave me my first indications that I might someday be an artist. Argentine painter Juan Manuel Sánchez made me an artist and convinced me from his example that my obsession with the female form was not unsound and perfectly normal.

Here in Vancouver, Vancouver Magazine's Mac (Malcolm Parry) gave me my chance to work for a magazine and commanded me to write my first article (a cover one!). His two art directors, Rick Staehling and Chris Dahl pushed me to be versatile and never gave me jobs in fashion which was the kiss of death for most locals, who were soon replaced by the new one on the scene.

Writer John Lekich with a simple sentence brought me into some sort of efficiency in my writing. He told me, “Whatever it is you write about in your first paragraph you should bring into the last one.”

Lekich and writer Les Wiseman, (whom I met around 1977) were and are both much younger than I am. This confirms my opinion that mentors can be of any age in relation to my own.

When I arrived with my wife and daughters in Vancouver, my knowledge of most things involving Vancouver and Canada was minor. As soon as Wiseman becameVancouver Magazine's rock columnist, In One Ear (and associate editor, etc), he had me firmly under his wing with statements (I was totally ignorant of the man who had written Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson), “As your attorney I would…” or “When in doubt, drink heavily.” I never had a clue that Wiseman by calling me "Lenso the Argentinian Lensman" he was associating me with Thompson's relationship with Ralph Steadman.

The expert on popular music that he was (and is) would give me such advice as, “Lou Reed is God, and if you are going to like heavy metal it must be Motorhead.”

In short order he made me a snob to good popular music and with his writing and my photographs we became darlings of the local record reps (they were powerful then). We were always granted exclusive access interviews like Sting (and later the Police), the Police or Iggy Pop in their hotels.

Wiseman invented the idea of making his Christmas In One Ear to be about a local band and we worked to make sure the photograph would reflect good Christmas spirit.

But of the many things he taught me there was this, which may be self-evident to most (but it certainly was not to me), “If you are going to write, write about that which you know.” I soon learned that this meant also that when you didn’t know you consulted someone who knew and then you did heavy research (at the library).

And there was one more thing, “Never start your writing in the beginning (implying that Dickens’s David Copperfield was the exception). Start in the middle and then work both ways."

The final coup de grâce (in a positive way) advice from Wiseman was in teaching me how to write profiles. He would make piles of a information of the person to be profiled on the floor. These piles  included quotes from friends, enemies or family. He would add quotes from books about the person, and so on. He would then start shuffling them around which gave his profiles (he won many kudos and magazine awards) a lightly intended randomness.

So, Mr. Wiseman, thank you.

Rosa 'Buttercup' 4 July 2019

My Rosemary has a peculiar (wonderful I would add) talent for seeing and picking beauty in plants that some of us (me, specifically) might not notice.

A few days while visiting Jason (he goes by a single name in his website) at the Fraser Valley Rose Farm (beyond Mission) Rosemary spotted a yellow rose. Here it is. It is English Rose Rosa ‘Buttercup’. Consider the uncoolness (in my books) of naming a lovely rose after an insidious known weed. There must be some sort of reverse-snobbish attitude that still makes my Rosemary a loveable snob.

We were at the Rose Farm to see what good roses, grown in our very own BC, that could shortly end up at the UBC Shop in the Garden where Rosemary is a volunteer.

My guess is that come fall some of Jason’s lovingly propagated roses will be for sale at the Shop in the Garden. I expect that Buttercup will be there, too.

With Centaurea cyanus 4 July 2019

The blue flower in the second shot has the botanical name Centaurea cyanus and is commonly called cornflower or bachelor’s button. My connoisseur wife knows that this, the annual version of the perennial is far more beautiful. On a recent trip to visit family in Prince Edward Island she bought the seeds. They grow tall in the pots with our roses.

I wonder sometimes what the Pre-Socratic philosophers did with their time. They did not have the “distractions” of books, films, internet, newspapers or TV. My conclusion is that they spent a lot of time in deep thought.

In this 21^st century on July 2, 2019 I have no job in sight, no financial worries and most of my preoccupation is spent trying to solve with my Rosemary whatever problems our immediate problem might have.

Our communication is something like this, “Alex have you seen Niño (our male cat)? Or I might say, “Rosemary Niña (our female) cat seems to want to be fed.” I often ask Rosemary, “Do we have anything we have to do tomorrow?” Her usual answer in the negative is always a relief.

We watch little TV and rarely go to the movies. We are not stuck in any cable serial TV series. We eat twice a day of which one meal is breakfast in bed over the NY Times and the Vancouver Sun.

While I am certainly not Epicurus or Democritus I do spend a lot of time thinking. Not all of it is in deep thought.

Consider my going to the back lane to throw some of our plant stuff into the green bin and observing the almost spent flowers on one of the scapes (hosta nomenclature for stalk) of my Hosta ‘Sum and Substance’. This is one of the largest of the yellow/gold hostas. Its leaves have thick substance and they can take lots of sun. I cut the scape and here you can see the scan.

There is an elegance that I might not have noticed had I been busy reading a novel or watching the news. I noticed the scape’s elegance because of my idle time.

I have scanned this plant before so you can observe various interpretations of a plant that I might not really have noticed in its details had I had many roses to look at. 

The roses today are all but gone. Those that will re-bloom will do so in a few weeks. Meanwhile the erstwhile hidden grace is something that gives me pleasure and no guilt in having been lost in thought about writing this now.

When I photographed Lee Iacocca sometime in the beginning of the 90s for the Vancouver business magazine Equity I had done my homework. In the early 80s Iacocca had started the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation to raise funds to preserve the deteriorated monument and its surroundings.

By 1982, a century's worth of weather, pollution, and sightseeing had left Lady Liberty's crown, torch and gown badly in need of a comprehensive refurbishing. So it was a great honor for me to accept President Reagan's request that I lead a private sector effort to raise funds for the restoration and preservation of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

Thanks to the generous donations of proud American citizens - from grandparents to school children - we were able to raise $500 million to restore these two great monuments to freedom. I still remember the overwhelming feeling of pride that swept over me when we unveiled the restored Great Lady in 1986. It was July 4th weekend, with a gala three-day event attended by President Reagan and President Francois Mitterand of France.

Lee Iacocca

It has always been my goal to research my subjects before I photograph them. In the 90s before the internet this meant going to the Vancouver Public Library.

When Mr. Iacocca faced my camera I said to him, “Can you give me, sir, a Stature of Liberty pose?”  

His smile and loud laugh was all I needed.

I have a second reason to remember that day. There was another photographer taking photographs of Iacocca. It was Rosamund Norbury. She came up to me and said (nobody has ever said it better or with more honesty), “Thank you Alex for never taking bad photographs.”