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| Leonardo da Vinci & Robertson Davies |
I will be giving a Powerpoint Lecture at the C41 Café, 2948 West 4th Ave, on the corner with Bayswater, on Saturday March 2 from 6 to 8. My presentation is entitled Photography Inspired in Art.
Why is this café called the C41? C41 is the universal Kodak chemical process in photo labs around the world to process colour negative film. The owner of the C41, Andy Wang, is an enthusiastic photographer who wants to make his café a Mecca no only for Kits residents but for photographers, too.
When I was 8 in Buenos Aires I became obsessed with anything that had to do with Leonardo da Vinci. I was particularly attracted to a red self-portrait which I copied many times with red pencils.
I had no idea what an artist was. I was interested in da Vinci’s experiments like his parachute.
When we arrived in Vancouver in 1975 I could not get a job anywhere as a photographer. I remember going to London Drugs and talking to someone behind the photo desk. The man behind the counter asked me what I did. I answered, “I am a portraitist.” Aghast, he countered, “I got a master in arts at Queen’s and I don’t call myself that!”
By the time I became a successful magazine photographer in the 80s I always answered the questions on my profession, “I am a photographer.”
I quickly discovered that photographers who said they were artists quickly became bitter at not being recognized as artists. In the many times that I went to the Presentation House Gallery, Diane Evans and Miss Love would introduce me to people there as the magazine photographer.
One day I asked a curator if she would pose for me. Her answer was, “I posed for Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Why would I pose for you?"
By the end of the 90s I was participating in group photographic exhibitions and in a couple of solo ones. I never sold anything and my Rosemary told me I was spending a lot of money on matting and framing.
And so it went until I met Argentine painter Juan Manuel Sánchez who at the end of the 90s was living in Vancouver. He gave me an art education as I had never known that El Greco was a Mannerist. I had no idea what Mannerists were.
Sánchez was the first person to tell me, “Alex sos un artista.” I don’t worry to much about this definition. I keep taking my photographs, portraits and scanning the plants in my garden. With my Kerrisdale darkroom gone 6 years ago when we moved to Kits I have been perfecting (I am really good at it) printing my photographs as inkjets in good archival paper.
Of late I have taken to task a friend (he is an artist) who in his conversations with me often says, “Artists and photographers…” It seems that we photographers are in another category. My friend counters with, “Must I say engravers, painters, sculptors, etc?”
More than anything I just like to pull his leg. I don’t have delusions of grandeur about being an artist although I suspect I will be rich and famous when I am dead.
