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| Tarren |
Thomas Wolfe’s posthumous 1940 novel title You Can’t Go Home Again is constantly quoted. It was in my mind last night at the Admiral Pub on East Hastings. This pub used to be called The North Burnaby Inn. I wrote about that former pub here.
I was there for an ecdysiast reunion. I believe it may have been one that will not be repeated. I showed up with Little Mary Arnold whom I first photographed in 1979.
When we
arrived, the only two persons we knew was a former dancer who went by the name of
Tiffany. She and Mary Arnold embraced as they worked together for many years. The other dancer was Tina.
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| Mary Arnold second from left - Tina fourth from left |
Except for the two ( Tina fourth from the left and Mary Arnold second from the left) we did not know anybody. The dancers there were from the next generation perhaps beginning at the end of the 20th century. We got depressed and we left. I had made prints to give to my dancers friends whom I thought would show up. None did. I thought of Tom Wolfe and now, more than ever that wonderful relationship I had with those women is embedded in my memory. I can even remember that when Little Mary Arnold needed a portrait for her costume design and sewing business she came to my Kits home and met Rosemary. They had a fun time together.
I am placing here four photographs which I printed to give out last night. Here is the reason.
The London Bobbies one, I was commissioned by then Cecil Hotel owner Sam Sorich to imitate a painting in his strip bar of 9 Bobbies. The reason is that Sir Thomas Peel who founded the first London police force in the 19th century soon those policemen were called Peelers.
I found 9
uniforms (incredible!) at a local costume rental place. This photograph was the
first and last photograph I ever took with a 4x5 camera. I did not like looking at pictures on the viewer that were upside down.
The next photograph is one that I took in the Drake Hotel dressing room. It would seem that I had lots of credibility in those days and I was trusted and allowed to enter the dressing room and others in the Vancouver stripper hotel pantheon. Again Tina, on the extreme left was the only other dancer we saw last night besides Tiffany.
The photograph of Portia with the cigarette which I took at the Number 5 Orange dressing room for an article “Sex Sells” for the Vancouver business magazine Equity is in my mind a special (I don’t want to use that now overused “iconic”. It is the portrait of an intelligent woman who did not mind me taking pictures in a place where no men were allowed. There is a look on her face that with her black outfit somehow reminds me of an elegant and expensive Italian car. This is a woman, who is a woman who knows she is a woman.
Sex Sells
The last photograph, not even in sharp focus, I took in my Robson Street, corner with Granville studio. I photographed Tarren for the first time around 1979 and stopped about 12 years ago. We had a mutual understanding and respect for each other that our photographs were a collaboration in which all she had to do was face my camera.
Like Portia she is obviously a woman. But there is something more there to me. She is that Platonic (from Plato’s philosophy of ideas) in which we can think of the essence of what a woman is somewhere in that cloud of Plato’s perfection. He told us that in this earth we only saw a hazy imperfection. I believe that this portrait conveys that every essence of what a woman is.
When we landed this woman wearing bright red hot pants was there at the edge of the dock. She said “How are you Alex?” The pilot immediately whispered my ear, “She is the reason why we almost crashed.”
That was
Tarren. When I look at the photograph, I am home.
