My relationship with women has been a long one,  from an early age my maternal grandmother was my mentor, teacher and inspiration.

All that continued when I married my Rosemary in Mexico City on November 8, 1968. She was a proto-feminist so I had to hem my jeans, sew my buttons, always aware that she held the purse strings. I was more the house-husband. I cooked and washed the dishes.

When we arrived in Vancouver in 1975, I quickly had to find a job and this was to wash cars at Tilden-Rent-A- Car on Alberni. By 1977 I was working as a freelance photographer at Vancouver Magazine.

One day I brought a photograph I had taken of a woman called April at Wreck Beach and showed it to Vancouver Magazine editor Malcolm Parry. Only now I can understand the knowing smile on his face as he knew exactly every step that I would take in the coming years in my photography of women. It would be from the extreme to the subtle. And so it was.

Two Adams

It was around 1979 that I was working for a gay weekly publication called Bi-Line. The editor Ron Langen had me photograph many a nude man. I became good at it. With a pile of those Bi-Lines they became my collateral for a most modern  Scottish, older, grey-haired woman at the Bank of Montreal who lent me money to get an expensive studio flash unit. Looking at my photographs, she said, “You are good. I will give you the money you need.”

There was another photo session for Bi-Line in which the editor wanted to increase straight readership by having women in the picture. He concocted the idea of Adam and Eve in paradise with the entrance of a second Adam.

It was in this shoot that I met an Italian woman called Maddalena  who inspired, and patiently taught through many years what to do with her and other women with my camera. She now lives in Italy and there is not one day that I do not remember how lucky I was to have met her.

In those days in other century on my way home I could pass by her apartment on the West End and be offered coffee. There were no shenanigans as I knew where my place was.

Thank you Maddalena. I am a better man because of you. It helped that both of us liked to eat gnocchi at Carlucci's.