Saturday, August 22, 2020

 

 

clois·tered

1. having or enclosed by a cloister, as in a monastery. "a cloistered walkway bordered the courtyard"

2. kept away from the outside world; sheltered.  "a cloistered upbringing"

   

I dislike the term lockdown, and other words used to our world’s present situation. The word cloistered seems to me a more adequate and a bit more friendly word to describe what is my state of affairs. So I can thusly write I am in a cloister in Kitsilano.

And with all this time in my hands I find myself trying to find the value of the stuff in my house. There is a lot of it even though when we moved from Kerrisdale we did a lot (that what my now 18 year-old granddaughter called it) dumpomatic.

Consider the possible value (as in my personal estimation, nothing to do with money) of the 18 sessions I had with the devastatingly beautiful Katheryn. What you see here are two scanned photographs on a contact sheet from a shoot in my Kerrisdale tub. They were part of a show I had of over 12 women that I posed more or less in the same way in the tub. From about 75 photographs that I took of Katheryn I had to pick one. It became my invitation card in the 1990 show. The photograph is striking and dramatic. 

 

 

But what of the others? I even shot some in colour transparency?

I can also safely write here that all my negatives of all these beautiful women are cloistered in my oficina. Who will see them when I am gone?

I have no idea but I wrote about that here.

 

 

Friday, August 21, 2020

 

 

Watching the DNC with my Rosemary on MSNBC and our reaction is something that I would not want to discuss here and bring up my political ideas in a time of extreme polarization. My politics like my religion I keep to myself.

But there is one aspect that I expand on without offending anybody. It has to do with feeling a nationality (a pride of nationality). With me this is complex.

Consider that my maternal grandmother was born in Manila but raised in19th century Spain. I feel Spanish

Consider that my mother was born in Manila. I feel Filipino.

Consider that my father was born in Buenos Aires but his parents were from Manchester. I feel English.

Consider that I was born in Buenos Aires. I feel Argentine.

Consider that with my mother and grandmother we moved to Mexico. I married my Canadian wife in Mexico City. Our two daughters were born in Tacubaya, Mexico City. I feel Mexican.

Consider that I had a high school education in Austin, Texas. I feel both Texan and American.

Consider that my Rosemary, our two daughters and I have lived in Vancouver since 1975. I am a Canadian Citizen. I feel Canadian.

Since my Rosemary and I have been reading the NY Times with breakfast in bed for 20 years we are up to date with the U.S.A. I have relatives and friends who live in Florida, California, North Carolina,Washington State, Texas and Oregon.

We watched the DNC with a lot of interest. But there was a point on the last day when what I watched and heard hit my insides and I felt terribly (wonderfully) American.

I listened to the Chicks (formerly Dixie) sing an a capella Star-Spangled Banner.

In the mid 50s when my mother taught in an American school in Nueva Rosita, Coahuila, Mexico in a two-room schoolhouse I was in the 8^th grade with five other boys. My mother often played the piano for us. Our two favourite songs were the Marine Hymn of the Republic and the Star-Spangled Banner. In my advanced age of 78 I know the beginning lyrics of the Argentine, Mexican, American and Canadian National Anthems. But my fave is the Star-Spangled Banner.

The version by the Chicks is absolutely awesome. I felt patriotic and proud without denigrating those other nationalities that I also feel. I slept well last night.

 

 Chicks Star-Spangled Banner

Rags Flags and Citizenship 

On Being a Texan

 

Thursday, August 20, 2020

 

 

In these days of incarceration and with summer coming to an end, it is easy to fall into a deep melancholy. Fortunately I live with three entities (the human one my Rosemary) and the not quite, our brother and sister cats Niño and Niña.

There are other ways of relieving melancholy. For me it is to go into my oficina and look at four extremely full drawers of my extensive 28 drawers that contain negatives, slides, contact sheets, etc. The digital photographs from my two digital cameras and our phones are now going into one terabyte exterior hard drives in themes.

 

 

The four drawers in question are called Woman and they are arranged in alphabetical order of the women that since about 1968 I have photographed.

Not too long ago I could call many of the women in the drawers and simply ask, “Want to do pictures?” No reason had to be given. These women would show up in my studio at the appointed time and they would pose. Many times I had ideas or themes. But many times this was not the case and I would (pardon the horrible expression) go with the flow.

 

 

I photographed all kinds of women. They were young, middle-aged and old. They were of all races including an exotic woman who was part Danish and part native Greenlander. Some were actresses (I am old-fashioned and I like that word), some were dancers or artists. And some were women I would notice in the street or in a café and I would go up to them and show them my card (when people had cards).

It would seem that in this century all of the above is gone.

As I go through my files I often go to the Ts and stop at Tarren.

Without any doubt she is the most beautiful in body and spirit woman I have ever photographed. My first pictures of her I took sometime around 1981. Over the years I had exactly ten sessions with her. Some of them we did not too long ago.

 

 

I can state that Tarren qualifies for my extreme aesthetic opinion of her because of a combination of body, face, personality and a presence that I cannot nail down.

When I look at her pictures I find myself smiling and listening to that sassy voice of hers, “Hi Alex,” which is what she said to me at the end of a Coal Harbour peer (wearing extremely short, shocking pink hot pants) in which the pilot of the de Havilland Beaver bringing me from a CBC job in Egmont almost crashed when he saw her standing there.

No, I cannot feel melancholy today. I can look back at my life, and in spite of all those famous men and women I have photographed, I know that what has made my life special is contained in four metal drawers of my oficina.

 

 

 

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

 

August 31, 1932 – August 19, 2020

 Journalist Allan Fotheringham died today. Of him I have written many times in blogs here:

 Allan Fotheringham - Don't be Beguiled 

Allan's Mistress 

Allan via Bert Stern

I photographed him many times. One of the reasons is that writer and former gossip columnist of Vancouver Magazine, Valerie Gibson, made it a point to pitch Editor Malcolm Parry a story on the man with marked frequency.

There is nothing that I can add here to what I know of Fotheringham that would be of interest to anyone getting this far.

But I have another angle that is personal to me that I will elaborate on. With Fotheringham’s death there is an almost empty shell in me that at one time was full. It was a container in my psyche that had the excitement of magazine assignments and of meeting people who in that past century were called journalists. They used typewriters, went to libraries for research, and most of all, they tried to write with some form of objectivity. They had style and substance. Some of this stuff rubbed off on me. Now with this man gone I know that I am at the end of a road that almost certainly will dead-end. 

Below you will find a set of instructions by noted Canadian designer Barbara Solowan and her aide Mary Jo Fitzgibbon. These were faxed when some photographers like yours truly carried a device called a pager.

Detailed instructions on how to take a photograph for a magazine were challenging, interesting and fun. That is all gone.

 

 

Followed Solowan's instruction. Note gutter

 

 

 

Socred Convention in Whistler July 20 1986 - 9AM!

Thanks to Wikipedia today I have found out that I shared my birthday with the man.