It was in 1953 that my mother took a trip of exploration to Mexico City from our then home in Buenos Aires. My grandmother had suggested we look for another place to live because of the mounting crisis with Perón.

She came back from a country that was all exotic for me. Not being from Mexico we in Argentina pronounced the country in Spanish as México without using the softer h to replace that x. My mother told us of volcanoes and mountains, of tortillas and Aztecs. It seemed all like a fairy tale to me.

Somehow I have never lost that feeling that Mexico is as exotic as India or China. There is that additional connection that I have with its language, that I was raised there in the golden age of Mexican art and film, that I married a luscious blonde from Canada there, that we visited my mother who lived in that ancient port city of Veracruz, that our two daughters were born in Tacubaya in Mexico City and probably best of all that my hobby interest in photography became a profession there.

After settling down in our new home city of Vancouver I returned to Mexico as I wrote here.

But there was an incident in that year in Oaxaca that left me with that question mark that is at the end of “what would have been if I had…?”

I wrote about that here and here. And I have pretty well left it receded in some corner of my receding memory.

Until last night, when I was ordering and filing all my Mexico slides, b+w negative and colour negatives from my several visits there.

In a b+w contact sheet taken with my Mamiya and with the only lens I had at the time, a wide angle (for the 6x7cm format) 65mm, I spotted five frames of that lovely Mexican woman called Ana Victoria.

I had sudden rush of feeling almost similar to that of seeing photographs by Timothy O’Sullivan of American Civil War soldiers at the Lincoln Library in Buenos Aires when I was 8 or 9 years old. The pictures were of men that looked very much like the men walking outside on Calle Florida. The pictures of Ana Victoria (I have no memory of having used that unwieldy Mamiya RB-67) I had never noticed or seen before. I look at the pictures (they are strangely new) and I wonder what ever happened to her. Is she alive? Is she happy?

And what would have happened had I accepted her invitation to fly with her to Puerto Escondido? Would I be writing this now? From here?

But there is one most negative addition. Why would I have spread Vaseline on a clear filter to soften the surround area of my full-length portraits of Ana Victoria? The pictures look dreamy because of the effect but they are also a blur in my memory.

Since I was a little boy I was fascinated by my grandmother and mother talking about “the jewels”.

My grandfather Don Tirso de Irureta Goyena wooed my grandmother María de los Dolores Reyes (who was living in Manila) from Paris by sending her jewels he had made for her there. This was a vast collection of lovely jades, pearls and diamonds that slowly with the financing of the divorces of my Aunt Dolly and Uncle Tony (both in Buenos Aires) was reduced to what was left when my mother died.

I will never forget that my Aunt Dolly called me on that day to tell me that it was a pity that my mother had died while being a thief.

Years ago when I photographed P.D. James I told her that her novels were strange for me as most murders and criminal altercations in her books were due to wills and last testaments. She was accurate in this I have since then realized.

My grandmother died without a will so my aunt and uncle wanted to divide those jewels in three parts. I told my mother that since we had the key to the bank safety deposit box her brother and sister could take a hike.

Not part of that collection was a beautiful Spanish fan that was owned by my concert pianist great grandmother Buenaventura Galvez Puig. The fan had her name in emeralds and diamonds. When my Aunt Dolly and my mother laid claims to it my mother told her sister to remove and keep the stones. We still have that fan. The idea that my Aunt would have pawned the whole fan was anathema to my mother.

Part of that lore of my boyhood was listening to my grandmother and mother talk about the jewels that they kept in a locked, black strong box. My grandmother might have asked, “Are you going to wear the little angel, the heart of diamonds or the jades to the party?” In other occurrences they would talk about the Hungarian jeweller called Verga. I would blush as in Argentine Spanish that is an item that a man has that women don’t have.

As a young teenager in Mexico City there were trips to the Banco de Londres y México on Balderas in downtown where the two would open that safety deposit box to return or take out some piece of jewelry. We keep our valuables in a box at the Bank of Montreal.

At age 77 my Rosemary are putting together a will with ample assistance from our Kerrisdale branch of the Bank of Montreal.

Today we went to Harling’s Jewellers, downtown. We were met by a pleasant gentleman in a back alley of Howe who directed us to an underground parking lot (the jewellery company does not have a store front but a splendid showroom in an office space). I felt we were dealing with spies in a secret operation! But the procedure has all to do with the company's concern of safety and the protection of clients coming to see them.

Christian Fernández, a pleasant cababayan, gave us an immediate assessment but we will get an official appraisal (he told us the difference between those words) in a week.

Before today we had divided the jewels into those that were obviously valuable from those, that while not being worth as much, carried a sentimental value. Fernández weighed the gold and checked for karat  stamps. Few of the jewels had those stamps but the jades had Chinese stamps.  We found out some interesting facts. One was that gold unlike other metals does not have a smell. He was able to discern this in my Rosemary's grandmother's gold watch (a mass produced Elgin we were told) and could smell copper in the alloy.

Rosemary and I will inform our two daughters of our action and it is our hope that somehow the collection will remain as one.

P.D. James might have had something to say about this.  

When my Rosemary, our two daughters and I moved to Vancouver in 1975 I had the illusion of becoming a photographer. This dream did not come easy but looking back, had we moved from Mexico City this year, my prospect of ever becoming a photographer here would be close to zero.

One of the best sources for photography in 1975 was that of the magazine, any magazine. And to that one could add newspapers.

It wasn’t until 1977 that I started getting work from Vancouver Magazine. By the 80s I was being paid (airfares included) to go to man places around the world to take photographs and to write. That kind of work I must stress now is all but gone.

My first job involving travel did not pay. I made a trade with Mexicana de Aviacíon to take photographs in exchange for airfare and hotels. My client besides the airline was a now long defunct local travel magazine.

I went to Mexico and wherever I wanted to go I was given a green light. One place I was intrigued by was a new Mayan ruin by the sea called Tulum. Can Cun did not yet exist.

In yesterday’s blog about Tulum I mentioned a coming storm. What is interesting is that the picture illustrating this blog I took perhaps 30 minutes before as it is one frame before that of the bather.

Again I must point out that the colour negative, a 6x7cm one, has deteriorated in my files which are in all metal cabinets and get no light.

I look at this attractive Mexican woman knowing that she would now be perhaps 60 years old. If I had a record of her name that is long gone. A little bit of my memories seems to dissolve day after day. The negative is proof that the memory once had a reality that was tactile but I can only imagine the smell of the sea and the quality of the white sand.

Enorme mar, corazón fiero 
Green Angels in Yucatán 
Mexicana

That singular pleasure of the photographer who is able to photograph a person more than once and sometimes many times over the course of passing years is a reminder on how we change. This goes both ways even if I am the one behind the camera. My subjects might note spots on my hands, thinning gray hair and permanent bags under my eyes.

This singular pleasure has a parallel with inanimate objects. I could add plants and trees not inanimate at all.

In the lovely colonial capital of the Mexican State of Guanajuato, also called Guanajuato, a large percentage of the gold and silver by the end of the 18^th century came from a nearby mine called La Valenciana. With a large portion of extra money floating around a baroque church called San Cayetano was built right by the mine.

In the 13 or 14 times that I have visited Guanajuato through the years I always stopped to stare and admire the door to the entrance of San Cayetano. While it may have survived perhaps three hundred years, time is beginning to deteriorate it. This colour picture I took sometime in the early 80s.

In 2005 my Rosemary and I returned with our granddaughter and I knew I was going to take one picture of her at the door. This I did.

Perhaps as the door deteriorates further in a few years we can return and photograph Rebecca at some glorious stage of her 20s.

I remember that the picture of Rebecca was on a hot day in summer. As a teenager I read Robert Heinlein's The Door Into Summer. Of how he came to write it Heinlein said:

Its title was triggered by a remark which my wife Virginia made when our cat refused to leave the house:  "He's looking for a door into summer."