Saturday, October 09, 2021

 

Rosa 'Margaret Merril' & R. 'Susan Williams- Ellis' 9 October 2021

It seems that as fall gets colder, the roses I may have considered delicate are not so. There are Roses R. ‘Margaret Merril’ and R. ‘Susan Williams-Ellis’ taking their time to wish me goodbye until next year. Margaret Merril was her favourite white rose and while I purchased R. 'Susan Williams- Ellis' when she was alive, Rosemary never saw her achieve her prime as this English Rose did this 2021.

Like everything else that surrounds me in my little Kits home, these roses remind me of that other rose (how could it be that I never connected the rose part of her name?), my Rosemary.

Rosemary was always pleasantly thin and her grace hid the fact that she was a hardy kind of woman. For our second daughter’s birth (Hilary) she arranged the then accepted procedure of inducing birth. She arranged for Dr. deKanter to do so on a Friday so that she could have the child on the weekend and with all things considered she might be back at work on a Monday. I have no memory if that is what happened.

Another time when Rosemary was visibly 9 months pregnant (Alexandra was the child to come) we went shopping to the Mexican department store El Puerto de Liverpool. She was looking for short and very slim waistcoat dresses. The woman clerk told us that we were in the wrong department and that maternity was on another floor. Rosemary, who rarely showed off, bent over (with a smile on her face as she did not want to obviously show off) and touched the floor with the flats of her palms and said, “I am giving birth in a few days and I will need new dresses.”

I must believe that the only delicate feature that could be attached to my Rosemary was her delicate and snobbish good taste.

White and blue were her favourite garden flower colours with a third preference for gray plants.

This blue and white duality take me to my childhood in Buenos Aires when Mercedes, our live-in housekeeper, would wash white clothes in our patio and would use a little blue cube the size of an ice cube that was called azul. It must have been a primitive form of bleach.

The Argentine flag, it was drummed into us at school, was azul celeste (the colour of a pale sky) y blanco.

No skin is ever white on people who are supposed to be white. Of late I have used the colour temperature settings (in Degrees Kelvin) of my digital camera to get pale skin to be as I see it with the eye. In that century when photographic film had no competition it was almost impossible to get a true white that was not tinged by cyan or blue. Our present digital world has corrected that and white will be white.

As I scanned the white roses I thought of Rosemary and how she would have smiled to see them in bloom at this late a date.

Since I began to blog in January 2006 (5372 blogs including this one) I have enjoyed matching my images with literature of my choice particularly that of poets like Jorge Luis Borges, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Julio Cortázar, Mario Benedetti and Eduardo Galeano. I have also found many other perhaps more obscure (to me) writers that I could match with my photographs (and of late) and plant scans.

 

 

This poem by Léopold Sédar Senghor (former President of Senegal and poet) was championed and read by Uruguayan poet Eduardo Galeano. I will translate it into English below. This poem should in these times be better known in English.

 

Querido hermano blanco:

Cuando yo nací, era negro.

Cuando crecí, era negro.

Cuando me da el sol, soy negro.

Cuando estoy enfermo, soy negro.

Cuando muera, seré negro.

Y mientras tanto, tú, hombre blanco,

Cuando naciste, eras rosado.

Cuando creciste, fuiste blanco.

Cuando te da el sol, eres rojo.

Cuando sientes frío, eres azul.

Cuando sientes miedo, eres verde.

Cuando estás enfermo, eres amarillo.

Cuando mueras, serás gris.

 

Dear white brother

When I was born, I was black.

When I grew, I was black.

When the sun hits me, I am black.

When I am sick, I am black.

When I die, I will be black.

Meanwhile, you, white man,

When you were born, you were pink.

When you grew, you were white.

When the sun hits you, you are red.

When you feel cold, you are blue.

When you are afraid, you are green.

When you are sick you are yellow.

When you die you will be gray.

Then, which one of us is a man of colour? 

 

 

 

Another poem that mentions the colour white in an almost negative way  Design is by Robert Frost:

 

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,

On a white heal-all, holding up a moth

Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--

Assorted characters of death and blight

Mixed ready to begin the morning right,

Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--

A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,

And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

 

What had that flower to do with being white,

The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?

What brought the kindred spider to that height,

Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

What but design of darkness to appall?--

If design govern in a thing so small.

 

 

And then there is Argentine feminist poem Alfonsina Storni’s You want me white (poem in Spanish and then in English):

 

Tú Me Quieres Blanca

 

Tú me quieres alba,

Me quieres de espumas,

Me quieres de nácar.

Que sea azucena

Sobre todas, casta.

De perfume tenue.

Corola cerrada

 

Ni un rayo de luna

Filtrado me haya.

Ni una margarita

Se diga mi hermana.

Tú me quieres nívea,

Tú me quieres blanca,

Tú me quieres alba.

 

Tú que hubiste todas

Las copas a mano,

De frutos y mieles

Los labios morados.

Tú que en el banquete

Cubierto de pámpanos

Dejaste las carnes

Festejando a Baco.

Tú que en los jardines

Negros del Engaño

Vestido de rojo

Corriste al Estrago.

 

Tú que el esqueleto

Conservas intacto

No sé todavía

Por cuáles milagros,

Me pretendes blanca

(Dios te lo perdone),

Me pretendes casta

(Dios te lo perdone),

¡Me pretendes alba!

 

Huye hacia los bosques,

Vete a la montaña;

Límpiate la boca;

Vive en las cabañas;

Toca con las manos

La tierra mojada;

Alimenta el cuerpo

Con raíz amarga;

Bebe de las rocas;

Duerme sobre escarcha;

Renueva tejidos

Con salitre y agua;

Habla con los pájaros

Y lévate al alba.

Y cuando las carnes

Te sean tornadas,

Y cuando hayas puesto

En ellas el alma

Que por las alcobas

Se quedó enredada,

Entonces, buen hombre,

Preténdeme blanca,

Preténdeme nívea,

Preténdeme casta.

 

You want me white (English) translated by Catherine Fountain

 

You want me to be the dawn

You want me made of seaspray

Made of mother-of-pearl

That I be a lily

Chaste above all others

Of tenuous perfume

A blossom closed

 

That not even a moonbeam

Might have touched me

Nor a daisy

Call herself my sister

You want me like snow

You want me white

You want me to be the dawn

 

You who had all

The cups before you

Of fruit and honey

Lips dyed purple

You who in the banquet

Covered in grapevines

Let go of your flesh

Celebrating Bacchus

You who in the dark

Gardens of Deceit

Dressed in red

Ran towards Destruction

 

You who maintain

Your bones intact

Only by some miracle

Of which I know not

You ask that I be white

(May God forgive you)

You ask that I be chaste

(May God forgive you)

You ask that I be the dawn!

 

Flee towards the forest

Go to the mountains

Clean your mouth

Live in a hut

Touch with your hands

The damp earth

Feed yourself

With bitter roots

Drink from the rocks

Sleep on the frost

Clean your clothes

With saltpeter and water

Talk with the birds

And set sail at dawn

And when your flesh

Has returned to you

And when you have put

Into it the soul

That through the bedrooms

Became entangled

Then, good man,

Ask that I be white

Ask that I be like snow

Ask that I be chaste

 

 

Friday, October 08, 2021

Alex & Aunt Inez-1942 Alex 8 October 2021 photograph Ralph Rinke

Ever since I studied Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in 1962 I have been obsessed by his dialectics. Just about  everything that I approach I do so by his thesis-antithesis–synthesis method.

In this age of conflict, people take opposites but never seem to arrive at a Hegelian synthesis. Hegel would be an excellent philosopher to discover right now.

When I was fifty and even when I was sixty I liked to compare my life as standing on a narrow red carpet. Behind me was a long stretch of it that represented my past. I liked to think that I was rolling it up in my direction while simultaneously rolling out carpet in front of me my future.

Now at age 79 I have arrived at a Hegelian re-consideration. This is that I roll back the carpet behind me, as it is that past that I am now exploring so much in my sleepless nights. And, in front of me, there is not much to unroll towards a future that is not going to be a long one.

It is of course a sobering re-consideration.

Today, at 3pm, I met up with two photographers of my generation, Ralph Rinke and Robert Kwong. We had a happy-hour repast at the Sylvia Hotel on a pleasant sunny day.

It was of course very comfortable to compare notes on our past in photography. I brought some show-and-tell. The main article of interest why my Jena-made Pentacon-F single-lens-reflex I purchased in 1958. It was my first serious camera. I sent a one hundred dollar money order from my Austin, Texas, Roman Catholic boarding school to Olden Cameras (they still exist!) to New York. A lovely glossy box with the camera appeared at our school PX a few weeks later. Before Rosemary, our two daughters and I left Mexico City in 1975 to drive our VW to Vancouver  had made a considerable amount of money with that camera.

Ralph Rinke, who is of German origin (his parents), was immediately captivated by my still-working camera and insisted on taking my picture with it. I am so glad he did. I have been able to combine his photograph (I really like it) with the first ever photograph taken of me in Buenos Aires in 1942 being held by my Aunt Inez Barber. Because she had divorced Barber (a horror then in Argentina) and remarried Alejandro Ariosa (from Mendoza) she could not be my godmother. She wanted to as she adored my mother Filomena. So, her daughter Inesita (my first cousin) who may have been 19, was my godmother. And in honour of Aunt Inez’s new husband I was given Alejandro as my middle name. I became Alex henceforth.

Thank you Ralph.

 

Thursday, October 07, 2021

Emily 20 August 2021 Fuji X-E3

 There I was walking from my dormitory to have lunch at the school cafeteria (St. Edward’s High School, Austin, Texas) when a short brother of Holy Cross with burly forearms beckoned me. He said, “Alex, I need an alto sax player for the school band. And you are it.” I protested by telling him I did not know how to read music. He told me he was going to teach me and that I was to show up at the band room on the next day on some appointed hour.

 

Nikon FM-2 35mm lens Kodak b+w Infrared Film

 

I was given an ancient nickel-plated instrument and $10 dollars. He said, “Tomorrow you are to go to town and buy a mouse trap. Your job will be to catch mice and to clean the band room floor. I will give you a salary.”

I did learn to read music and somehow I was able to get a sweet tone out of my instrument which in a later year Brother Edwin, Reggio, C.S.C. (that was his name) had re-plated. I was not only good enough for the school band but I became part of the more exclusive jazz band.

 

Mamiya RB67 Pro-SD Rollei Infrared Film

 

With the first 100 dollars I had Brother Emmett Strohmeyer at the PX write meup a money order for Olden Cameras in NY City. A few weeks later I was the happy owner of a Pentacon-F single lens reflex with an f2.8 50mm lens.

It would seem that Brother Edwin Reggio in 1958 made me the photographer I would one day become. He is now gone but the Pentacon-F works just fine.

That 1958 camera with which I made good money taking portraits of wealthy Mexican families in the 70s before Rosemary, our two daughters and I moved to Vancouver was the right camera at the right time in an age of journalism and magazines that hit its peak then and pretty well disappeared in the last 5 years. Nobody is going to pay me to go to Paris, London, Belgrade, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Lima, Madrid, Florida, Cancún, Mexico City or to fly in helicopters across Canada to photograph logging mills.

Nikon FM-2 35mm lens - Kodak b+w Infrared Film

 

I learned my profession well because I was inspired by very good art/design directors and the magazines that I worked for demanded quality that was also beyond the norm standards.

At age 79 I believe I will go to my grave with all that info that now would be considered old-fashioned. I don’t think style in photography has progressed from the excellence of the 20^th century. We now have perfectly sharp images (no longer called photographs) that fit the needed situations and not much money changes hands.

Fuji X-E3

 

My friend Emily, who lives in Victoria has posed for me several times. Because she is a good photographer in her own right I must do stuff that is (to use her word) different. I have to be on my toes with Emily!

This is why a month ago I photographed her in my little Kitsilano studio with four cameras:

1. A Nikon FM-2 with Kodak b+w Infrared Film

2. A Nikon FM-2 with Rollei b+w Infrared Film

3. A Mamiya RB-67 Pro-SD with 120 Rollei b+w Infrared Film

4. A Fuji X-E3 digital camera set to 200 ISO in colour

 

Nikon FM-2 35mm lens Rollei b+w Infrared Film

 I have been told my many photographers who shoot exclusively with digital cameras that I can convert any digital shot into to b+w from its original colour, it can be high contrast and with certain apps it can be made to look like infrared.

I have been unable to explain that I shot pictures that because I used four cameras were slightly different from each other while the ones my friends say is the better route would all be version of the same one. 

Fuji X-E3

 

It is almost like a musical studio recorded session with more than one take.

I did have some initial but funny problems. The viewfinder in the Nikons is in the middle while the Fuji viewfinder is on the upper left. I would place a Nikon at my eye and look through the left and I saw nothing! I did the same with the Fuji.

 

Nikon FM-2  - 35 mm lens Rollei b+w Infrared Film

One of the reasons for using both Kodak and Rollei film is that the Rollei is not true infrared film. But both have no anti-helation layers so that not all light hitting the negative penetrates to the emulsion. Some of it bounces off. When these films are slightly over-exposed you get these pleasant halos with portraits. For both films (and the one in the Mamiya) I use a deep red filter. This makes skin look like Limoges China. But the red filter would render lips white and make Emily look like a living dead. There is a quick remedy and this is the use of purple lipstick.

Nikon FM-2 35mm lens Kodak b+w Infrared Film

 

Thank you Emily, for inspiring me to keep taking photographs. Perhaps the next project will involve the use of Brother Edwin’s and my Pentacon–F. Yes?    

 

Fuji X-E3

Fuji X-E3

 

Wednesday, October 06, 2021

 

Séance - Neil Wedman

I have been reflecting about what is not and who is not. That led me to think of the noise of the Big Bang or the images of stars that have exploded. We get these sounds and images long after the reasons for the sounds and the explosions are gone.

This poem by my Mexican poet friend and novelist Homero Aridjis always comes to mind.

Carta de México

Por estas callejuelas

ancestros invisibles

caminan con nosotros

ruidos de coches

miradas de niños

y cuerpos de muchachas

los traspasan

Impalpables y vagos

frente a puertas que ya no son

y puentes que son vaciós

los atravesamos

mientras con el sol en la cara

nosotros vamos también

hacia la transparencia  

 Letter from Mexico

Invisible ancestors

walk with us

through these back streets

car-noises

the stares of children

young girls’ bodies

cross through them

Weightless     vague

we travel through them

at doorways that no longer are

on bridges that are empty

while with the sun on our faces

we too

move toward transparency

 

Homero Aridjis

Eyes to See Otherwise - Ojos de otro mirar

Selected Poems

Edited by Betty Farber and George McWhirter

 

I can begin to understand why Henry Ford and Harry Houdini were involved in the first half of the 20^th century with séances. I do not believe in them but I see the fascination.

For anybody who has studied calculus and knows of asymptotic hyperbolas it is then known some  things happen at infinity but not before then. 

 

 

With that same calculus, no matter how they clean an ocean oil spill, remnants of it will remain and will only disappear completely when that curve slowly but surely hits the y or x axis at infinity.

To me all the above is my rationalization for my obsession with the noting of my Rosemary’s presence. It may not be there corporally but it is there perhaps in the remnants of a breath or of a word addressed to me.

When I walk Niño around the block his living presence of my Rosemary is there and there is nothing that I can do to dissipate it. It is then when I remember that lovely poem by Homero Aridjis Carta de México. 

I adore my framed  Neil Wedman Séance I proudly display in my living room.