It was sometime around 1980 when Vancouver Magazine art
director Rick Staehling told me, with little apology, that he wanted me to photograph some
sewing machines. I did. This taught me to be humble about my career as a
Vancouver photographer for magazines.
It brought to mind that St. Luke account of the publican and the Pharisee at a synagogue. The Pharisee looking up thought, “Thank you God for making me who I am now. I give to charity and I lead a honest life. Thank you for not making me like that publican here.”
The publican did not dare look up and apologized for being who he was and asked for forgiveness.
We know which one of them went to Dante’s lowest circle of hell.
In the same way I believe that a photographer in Vancouver has to stay humble and do whatever is offered. I avoided pornography (got close!), babies (ended up scad of photographs of my granddaughters) and somehow avoided weddings with the exception of Joey Shithead’s and that of Susan Musgrave marrying the bank robber in prison. I madee lots of money from those photos for many newspapers and magazines.
It was only Argentine artist Juan Manuel Sánchez who in the beginning of this century assured me that I was an artist. Until then I had avoided that grand but for me troubling epithet.
The pictures here I took on 4 December 2022 of two South American friends. They came to my house and I told them that I was going to shoot with a digital camera, project a Venetian blind gobo on them and not tell them what to do. I said that they could wear whatever they wanted or not wanted to wear. They chose a red, and, a white taffeta.
I have stated many times in my blogs that a photographer cannot rest on past laurels and like 19th century gunfighters a photographer is as good as his last shoot.
