Rosemary would say to me often, “You are bored. Go and write a blog.” And I would. Now without her and 6062 blogs (including this one) later, I am at it. My blogs, feeding my cats, walking Niño around the block, when weather permits, and talking to my two daughters give me a reason to persist in my whim to remain alive.
I have written before that I am not usually blocked in writing every day and that in a past, when journalism was alive, I could have written a daily column, no sweat.
Today I had to force myself to go to my oficina and think (coldly) about a blog. I came up with this one as thanks to Bill Richardson’s concept of Bunny Watson, I am able to bring elements together that do not seem to have anything in common. Let me begin.
Sometime around 1977 Kodak introduced a Special Order SO-410 that was designed to be used for solar flare photography. Because this b+w film had an unusual sensitivity to red, portrait photographers knew that the film would make human skin luminous and facial flaws would be diminished. I used this film with fabulous results.
Kodak noticed the unusual use of this film and re-introduced it as SO-115. I used it with fabulous results.
Kodak was overwhelmed with orders for that film so they re-introduced it as Technical Pan Film and offered it not only in 35mm but in the 120 format. I used it with fabulous results.
In the late 90s we had in Vancouver a good photographic gallery called The Exposure Gallery. They had themed/group shows. I participated in all of them. One was to shoot with a primitive camera.
So I used a 120 film format German Gevabox. I called up Virve Reid. I had photographed this lovely woman many times. She had been the first Canadian Playboy Playmate with red hair. Amazingly a woman who now was older and had a Rubenesque body agreed that I photograph her. And so I used the world’s then sharpest film imaginable with the Gevabox. Because there was no connection in the camera for flash I darkened my studio, used the B shutter (the shutter stays open until you click it for a second time) and shot my flash many times as the film’s sensitivity of 25 ISO was very low.
The result was a lovely photograph. My friend Ian Martin
chose the photograph to convert it into a photogravure. What you see inside the
frame here is Martin’s photogravure. Some years ago Martin disappeared into Washington State and my guess is that he is gone.
In my Virve Reid files I found the fax that I originally sent to Ian Martin. The date is clearly seen, 01/28/92, time 10:48 in the evening.
What is ultimately lots of fun for me (it is a wonderful distraction to boredom) is to arrange the elements on my scanner to illustrate this blog.
Of course I have to be careful in this 21st century not to show stuff that would go against “community standards”!
