Somehow thinking about our Nochebuena (Christmas dinner), a few (?) days ago, of which I will write about shortly, seems to have happened at an undefined time and day in an uncertain past.

In my profession of free-lance photography I never experienced that Monday to Friday thing, I felt strange when people would ask me, “How was your summer?” I worked when I could get work all year long.

It was my Rosemary who had her 9 to 5 job and that had us on a schedule and a pattern of either her driving to work or me doing it. As soon as she stopped working and my photography went by the way of deadened journalism we began to confuse the days of the week.

These days, almost every day feels like a weekend.

In my boyhood the hot Buenos Aires summer days in that period between Christmas and Los Tres Reyes (Epiphany, January 6) was an eternity of waiting. It was on the 6^th when we received the really neat toys which were deposited by our shoes outside the bedroom door.

Now in this waning year the days between Christmas Day (we do nothing on that day as we celebrate Christmas Eve) and New Year’s, are confusing. They are neither short nor long and the day of the week they are is a conundrum of doubt.

But it is on those days when one can do what old people like me do which is to reminisce of our past. Not exactly as I have written here my exciting plans for 2020.

I brought back my blog from long time ago about New Year’s in Houston, Texas (a drunk New Year’s) and another when Rosemary were either married or not quite married. The photo, probably taken by a chap selling coconuts with rum, was in Mocambo, a beach in Veracruz. Rosemary was wearing a dress that she has forgotten she ever wore.

I cannot. It was in this very short dress that I had spotted her a few months before (from the rear outside an English school). I saw the dress, the beautiful legs and the long, blonde, straight hair (she used an iron).

What is amazing is that the photograph that appears in that blog, was a scan of a small photograph from our now discontinued family album. The picture you see here is from the original colour negative. There is something to be said about being able to find negatives that I took so long ago.

In that sheet of colour negatives there are many that are most interesting featuring my mother, Rosemary and our baby Alexandra Elizabeth and her godmother.

Godparents are very important in Latin American countries. They indeed are called to help if parents die or when financial assistance is needed. The relationship between a parent and a godfather makes the godfather “mi compadre” or my friend I share my fatherhood with. The term for godmother is “mi comadre”. Sometimes in a politically incorrect century I Mexico, comadres were women who liked to gossip.

The two extra pictures here were taken around 1968. They are in the crater of the Nevado de Toluca:

Nevado de Toluca ( ‎4,680 m,15,350 ft) is a stratovolcano in central Mexico, located about 80 kilometres (50 mi) west of Mexico City near the city of Toluca. It is the fourth highest of Mexico's peaks, after Pico de Orizaba, Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl. The volcano and the area around it is now a national park.

Etymology: It is often called by the Nahuatl name Xinantecatl which is usually translated as The Naked Lord, Señor Desnudo in Spanish, although other etymologies have been suggested such as "Lord of the Corn Stalks", Tzinacantecatl or Zinacantepec (Mountain of the Bats). Further evidence regarding the etymologies of this mountain has surfaced after many archeology discoveries in and around the area. It has been concluded that its correct etymology is Chicnauhtecatl meaning "nine lakes" as the top of the cone has various deep lakes.

Wikipedia

There is a dirt road that winds up into the crater. One of the lakes is called The Lake of the Moon. We went in our blue VW with our compadre Andrew Taylor. Some hardy souls treck up the inside sides of the volcano and ski town. There is no chair lift to go up again!

I am wearing a ceramic fired peace symbol I had purchased at the end of 1967 as well as the US Marine Corps jacket that was surplus probably because it had a repaired patch,at the height of the crotch, where the previous owner might have been shot in Vietnam. The scarf I lost many years later when running during a windstorm in Victoria during a photo assignment. I cried when I lost it as it had been given to me by my Argentine girlfriend Susy during a miserable Buenos Aires winter.

Claudio Ronco, Olena, María Catalina O'Reilly 2019

In waning days of the year I have the urge to call up people I have not seen or heard from for years. Because many have abandoned their landlines, Canada 411 is of no use to find them. Some of these people from my life are irrevocably lost. But I am not the only one with this customary year-end desire. I have received a few calls and emails out of the blue.

One of them was a local photographer who told me about our Vancouver photography scene as it was (the good old days?) and how so much had changed. I discerned a considerable level of melancholy and I did my best to sound positive.

Sounding positive about photography in this 21^st century for young photographers getting out of school, has to be real downer. There are few magazines or newspapers to hire them and stock photo agencies sell pictures so that these new photographers are not sent to Paris or London to take photographs.

For me, since I am obsolete, redundant, retired & inconsequential, I am not affected by the above. I am settled with my Rosemary in our Kits digs and we don’t need anything.

With that in mind I can assert here most positively that photography for me is alive and well and full of boundless possibilities.

Looking at a photograph of mine (either a scanned film one or from my digital Fuji X-E1) on my monitor, fixing it to my liking and then pressing print, in a few minutes my Canon Pro-1 spits it out exactly as I see it in my monitor. I need not make another. One is sufficient.

While that is not a darkroom printed photograph (in an unventilated darkroom that mine always were) it is a very good facsimile of the real thing. I do this in daylight with a pleasant mug of tea on my desk while looking out of the window of my oficina on the garden that has been put to bed.

I do not feel guilty.

And then there are all the advances of this century’s technology. Who would have thought 10 years ago that I would pack my compact Metz BL-400 in my hard suitcase with a Manfrotto light stand that fits (even though it extends to 7 ft) and a small Chimera soft box? The folks at airport security ask for an explanation and they invariably smile when I tell them that I am traveling with a studio in my carry on! With that unit, my digital camera (an extra Fuji-X-E1 as backup) and my Minolta Flash Meter III all is possible.

Who would have known that Rosemary and I could travel to Venice and to visit our friend, period cellist Claudio Ronco, (and his wife Emanuela Vozza who also plays the cello) and to photograph him with a studio light by a canal? We used a not very long extension cord from their kitchen window.

Then a few months later in Buenos Aires I had no problem with the 220 voltage of my native city as the Metz can handle both 110 and 220. I purposely and severely underexposed my Fuji X-E3 to get the effect you see here of my niece María Catalina O'Reilly. It was also there where I photographed these lovely tango dancers in our hotel. They normally dance on a nearby street corner.

The image of Olena by our Chickering is something that I could have never really done with film. I played with the Degrees Kelvin colour temperature and with window light I achieved that pristine almost white skin so difficult to do in the past.

For me these three images show that I have lots of exciting possibilities in this coming year.

One of the most enjoyable features of that past century that was the 20^th was the importance of journalism. It was for me an era where a dream one night could be a reality a month later. Why a month? This was because I was a gainfully employed magazine photographer in Vancouver and in many cases in the rest of Canada and beyond. You pitched a story at the beginning of the month and if you were lucky you would see it in print by the end of it,

My writing cohort, Les Wiseman (began as a writer of rock music for Vancouver Magazine in a column called In One Ear and finished as associate editor before moving on to teach journalism) and I liked to watch the marvelous local stripper scene in many pubs in the city. Wiseman imbibed beer and I drank expensive soda water.

Looking back at that scene from this different century it all seems quaint and, clean. The local bars were run like ships and you could lick the floors. This all of course was happening, as yet no man could sit at his computer with a beer on the side and look at pornography. Not that any of the strippers Wiseman and I liked where anywhere close to representing any association with that ugly word.

Another interesting feature about our local exotic dancer scene was that the women involved realized how important it was to choose their music. Some were daring in dancing to Lou Reed or to tunes by local pop or punk bands.

Samantha, who you see here, liked to dance to Roxy Music’s Avalon. She had a perfectly voluptuous body that somehow was paradoxically slim and elegant. Her face could have launched many ships to their eventual destruction. But it was her very long hair that was her piece de resistance. It was long enough to reach beyond her waist. She would somehow sway that hair, much in the same way as a cat can control its tail. Without any clothes her hair was her most important item of clothing.

The photograph you see here is a Kodak Ektachrome. I took this one and others and was well paid for them. Wiseman and I went to Vancouver Magazine Editor Malcolm Parry with the idea that Wiseman explained more or less in this way, “We want to do an article on the stripping scene in Vancouver from the business side of it.”

And so it was. And this Ektachrome somehow reflects for me an age when it was all less complicated and dreams came true.

Kodachrome

 

Christmas Eve in Kitsilano 2019

 Before I had a digital camera de idea of taking a Christmas Eve group photograph was instantly solved by using the then old-fashioned Polaroids. The idea was to post on the same night the picture and the blog.

This year it got more complicated. To begin with there is less room in our duplex living room. We have to scrunch into the corner with the Mexican hanging chair. Then there is the idea that most don’t want to pose and want me to hurry. I believe that the result (3 exposures) is the worse one yet.

Last year’sphotograph I took in my youngest daughter’s home in Burnaby. We kept a tradition that had lapsed when our friend Abraham Rogatnick died 7 years ago. This is the idea of having someone not from the family at dinner. We had our friend, Portland baroque bassist Curtis Daily with us. And somehow I was able to convince both my granddaughters to pose together. That was impossible this year. Had I insisted we would have had a scene.

On the other hand this 2019 Christmas was most unusual as we had with us as a guest, a guardian angel.

Local, British-born actor Bernard Cuffling has reprised many times in the stage version of It’s a Wonderful Life, Clarence the Guardian Angel.

He came with a very special gift which we instantly put on our tree. At the end of his first run of It’s a Wonderful Life he was given as a memento a ceramic angel’s wings with a little bell (the significance is that when a bell rings an angel gets his wings).

Cuffling with his marvelous baritone entertained us at the table with many a tale of his meeting up and acting with actors that we all know. What we did not know is that he was a personal friend of Ginger Rogers.

The menu was roast beef (I cooked it), Yorkshire Pudding (Rosemary is famous for it), my gravy for the pudding, my homemade cranberry sauce, Keen’s mustard, barbecued vegetables, cucumber salad (Hungarian style) and Argentine Malbec. For dessert we had flan, and merengues with fresh fruit. We finished with Yorkshire Gold Tea.

Cuffling remarked that he had not had Yorkshire Pudding for 25 years. Thanks to Cuffling we learned something else that for me was the high point of the evening.

For the first production of  That's a Wonderful Life at the Arts Club Theatre, Cuffling enquired if he was going to get his wings. He was told there was no budget. Arts Club Theatre Artistic Director (he has a good memory) Bill Millerd said, "We have a pair of wings in storage that were used by Dennis Simpson in Angels in America." With some adjusting using a coat hanger, Cuffling got his wings. 

This was special for me and for Cuffling as we both had met (and Cuffling worked with him) Dennis Simpson who died some years ago. To remember those who are not with us is what makes Christmas a melancholic delight.

Anne Macauley & Dennis Simpson