Rosa 'William Shakespeare 2000' - Rosa 'Sombreul' & Clematis heracleifolia 'New Love' & Krysztoff Kieslowski

On October 13 1996, I had the fortune to photograph Polish film director Krysztoff Kieślowski in Hotel Vancouver for the Globe and Mail. His most famous films are a trilogy of colours:

The Three Colours trilogy (French: Trois couleurs, Polish: Trzy kolory) is the collective title of three psychological drama films directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski: Three Colours: Blue (1993), Three Colours: White (1994), and Three Colours: Red (1994).

Wikipedia

I watched gentle Christopher Dafoe interview him in the legendary (for me since I have photographed so many people there) Sun Room of the Hotel Vancouver. Kieślowski did not look well and he was chain smoking. I got this impression that he was not going to be around for long. A year later he had a heart attack and barely recovered. He died March 13, 1996. 

When I pulled out my deep green filter he looked at me and smiled. "I am a photographer, too," he said to me. "I know what a green filter does, exactly." And he posed for me and winked. As he looked straight into my camera I saw a man who was preparing to die. And I also knew, he knew, exactly, what the photograph was going to look like.

Today 26 August 2022 I had the idea that since I had this portrait of Kieślowski that I might find three flowers that would be red, white and blue. But that was not to be. The white rose and the blue herbaceous perennial clematis (not all clematis are vines) were in for the idea.There was not one red rose in bloom (Rosa ‘William Shakespeare 2000’ had a bud (I cut two yesterday) but I was not going to snip it. I believe that cats, babies and roses do not perform on demand.

Yesterday’s scan of William Shakespeare 2000 will have to do. Rosa 'Sombreul' and Clematis heracleifolia 'New Love' I scanned today.

Rebecca & Rosa 'William Shakespeare'

Rosa 'William Shakespeare 2000' 25 August 2022

When my mother, grandmother and I moved from Buenos Aires to Mexico City in 1953 our first house was in Colonia Anzures. The street we lived on was Guillermo Shakespeare. When we took taxis home my mother would pronounce for the benefit of the driver the name in this way “shakes-peh-ha-reh”. There is a tradition in Latin America of translating the first name into Spanish of people from other countries so in Mexico City you have Plaza Jorge Washington and one of the better known Argentine authors who was born in Quilmes, Provincia de Buenos Aires is known as Guillermo Enrique Hudson.

It wasn’t until Rosemary, our two daughters and I moved to Vancouver in 1975, that I became acquainted with going to a Shakespeare play.

In 1966 I was madly in love with an Argentine girl called Susy. When I found out that they were screening the 1936 film Romeo and Juliet with Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer I was keen to take her. I had seen the film with my mother who adored any film with Leslie Howard. It was at the film that Susy told me, “They are much too old to be that romantic couple.”

In 1984 Rosemary and I went to see a Richard III at Vanier Park in a just new-to-happen-moment that prefigured Bard on the Beach. It had Christopher Gaze as an evil hunchbacked king.

In the 90s David Austin introduced an English Rose, Rosa ‘William Shakespeare'.  We instantly bought it and it did well for us but Austin de-listed it and in 2000 introduced the unromantically named Rosa ‘Shakespeare 2000’.  Our original rose died. We then purchased the improved one that is not very vigorous in our Kitsilano garden.

But I love to look at these photographs of my granddaughter Rebecca who often posed for me with that rose.

I hope that the time will come when Rebecca might say to me, “Papi I would like you to take a portrait of me with William Shakespeare.” 

Béatrice Larrivée - 24 August 2022

Béatrice 01

Beatrice 02

I wrote here that from my New York Times I found out about the death of American art photographer  Jerry Uelsmann.  I wrote about it here. Since then I have been shooting film when possible with the idea of doing what I call my "scanner negative sandwiches without mayonnaise".

The best results happen when the negatives are from the same session and in particular when a few of the exposures are taken with the camera firmly on a tripod.  When you flip one of the negatives in the opposite direction sometimes you get a neat result.

At this date of 5 August 2022 my plants in the garden are waning in direction of fall. To keep myself distracted, I had the good fortune of having dancer Béatrice Larrivée, 26, pose for me yesterday. Because we are blessed in Vancouver to have a processing joint called The Lab I was able to drop her off at Arts Umbrella where she is giving classes on a dance system called Gaga and still make it to The Lab and then even get the film back by 5!

Béatrice  Larrivée - 24 August 2022

 Béatrice Larrivée - Dance Passion

0.1 – 00.1- 000.1

On September 1990 I was drinking a beer with American artist Jeff Koons at the Marble Arch bar. He was in Vancouver because his partner, the notorious Cicciolina, was undraping at that Marble Arch stage. I told him that there was a very good show of paintings by Attila Richard Lukacs at the Diane Farris Gallery featuring American Marine Corps troopers in dress uniform holding American flags. I suggested to him that the CBC might want to interview him at the gallery where he would give his opinion of the art on the wall. He was keen.

I called the CBC and this is what they told me, “Who is this Koons guy? No, we are not interested.”

That answer reminded me of another Vancouver cultural faux pas. When Willard Holmes was the Director of the Vancouver Art Gallery he was approached by the Mexican government which was sending a show of Frida Kahlo paintings for a show in a Tokyo museum. The paintings were going on Japan Airlines via Vancouver. The Mexican Government simply wanted Holmes and the VAG to insure the show while it was being shown in Vancouver. Holmes declined. I was told of this by his successor Brooks Joyner.

And today, 24 August 2022 our cultural faux pas persists.

Larrivée, 26, came over to my house for a portrait session. The b+w photograph above was the first photograph I took of her. To me it screams presence and skill.

She has been hired by the folks at Arts Umbrella Dance Company (she graduated from there in 2016) to teach the dancers a dance system called Gaga pioneered and developed by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin.

Gaga is a movement language intended to help practitioners raise physical awareness by focusing on (or in Gaga terms, “listening” to) the rhythm of their bodies, letting them direct their movement and the pleasure that movement brings. Larrivée is based in Tel Aviv with the Batsheva Dance Company directed by Naharin.

I am not a dance critic but I started taking photographs of the best Canadian dancers in 1991for the Georgia Straight and by the beginning of this century I wrote articles on dance for the then very good Saturday Vancouver Sun. For many years I photographed and followed the dancers of the Arts Umbrella Dance Company that not only has sent their graduating dancers to Ballet BC but some of the best dance companies in Europe and the United States.

With that previous experience when I went to see Béatrice Larrivée at the Dance Centre this past Saturday and watched her dance solo for one hour I left with the conclusion that it was the best solo performance I have ever seen in this city.

I called the former Vancouver Sun Dance Critic who did not call me back. I called the former Georgia Straight Arts Editor and she did not call me back. I tweeted someone I know on CBC Radio and was asked if Larrivée was going to dance again. Interest disappeared when I answered in the negative.

I did not give up and went to the CBC and located, outside, some minions of the French CBC and asked them if anybody they worked for would be interested. They took my card and told me that if anybody were interested in interviewing and watching Larrivée give her Gaga class at the Arts Umbrella Dance Company they would call me.

They never did.

It all reminds me of the fly scene from the film The Magnificent Seven involving a has-been gunfighter Lee played by Robert Vaughn

 Lee awakens from a nightmare, one possibly caused by the wine he drank from a gourd tied to his wrist. Two villagers rush in to comfort him. Lee admits that he’s scared. “The lies you tell yourself. ‘No enemies, alive.'” The film cuts to three flies buzzing around the table. Lee snatches one. We are shocked. Then he says, “There was a time when I would have caught all three.” The farmers soothe him, saying, “Only the dead are without fear.”

 I feel like Mr. Vaughn in that at one time all the people I called would have called me back.

It was my Spanish grandmother who taught me the expression “un cero a la izquierda” or a zero to the left (of the decimal point. No matter how many zeros you place there the value will ultimately be the same 0.1

That’s me. But then I was lucky to take my portraits of Larrivée. This aging gunfighter has survived another shoot. It gives me the comfort that I am not quite obsolete, redundant, retired & inconsequential.

Gentiana asclepiadea 23 August 2022

Top - Sedum matrona  & Senecio cineraria 23 August 2022

After 5641 (including this one) blogs, since January 2006, when I often wrote “why do I blog blogs”, I have come to definite conclusion that I do it as a 21^st century Dear Diary. It is really the only legacy I leave to my two daughters.

I have thousands of filed family photographs but the ones contained in my numerous family blogs have some of the best ones.

In these waning days of summer my obsession in scanning my plants is still strong. I may have at least 2000 of them in very high res tiff scans that could serve for some botanical/scientific purpose.  But I have found that nobody is interested in this scanographer’s scanographs. Since I started my plant scans I have sold exactly two prints. One went to a lawyer for his home and the other to real estate agent who bought it for a client. If I were 35 and needing money I would make the rounds of hotels.These plants scans would not offend anybody.

I often tell people that in Vancouver it is most important if one is a photographer (who thinks he may be an artist) to not be bitter. This negative emotion can destroy.

And so I happily scan every day. It is fun to sit in my comfortable oficina with one or both cats in residence removing little spots from my scans while discovering details in the plants of my garden that only my Rosemary well knew, as she looked at her plants with a human double macro lens, which is what her eyes were.

In today’s double scan, the one of the gentian is ample proof how a scanner can outperform the best camera macro lens. The photographer goes to the plant and must adapt to the lighting situation. In my case I can cut the flower and a leaf and fuss over both on my scanner. This is lots of fun.

In the other scan of the senecio and the sedum, I appreciate Rosemary’s tastes for grey plants and her sedum which is at its best when the hostas are beginning to show the effect of a very hot summer. The roses, the ones that are remontant, are in wait for cooler weather before they bloom again.

Thanks to my Rosemary I have learned that I, too, have macro lens eyes when amply helped by my scanner.

And for a  "Why not?" here is an additional scan including a lovely interloper who lasts for days looking like this even when it is cut.

with Garvinea 'Sweet Fiesta' 23 August 2022