Neil Wedman

 

Edward Hopper

 For an explanation on the why of the two pictures above scroll to the end.

Today I gave a Powerpoint presentation – Photography Inspired in Art at the C41Café. The café is not big so the 28 people that showed up was a crowd. But I have an idea that Saturday is not a good day for this sort of thing.I called many people to invite them:

1. I am going to the Wine Festival, sorry.

2. I have a bad cold and so does…

3. I have a bad cold and so does…

4. Sorry I have covid

5. I had a leg operation, sorry.

6. I am going to the Vancouver Symphony.

7. Andy asked if Joaquin Pedrero was coming. “No, he is in Mexico.”

8. “Is Charlie Smith who wrote the lovely piece about you on Pancouver coming?” “No, he is in London.”

9. And so on.

I almost took this personally. On the positive side, the projection worked flawlessly and Andy Wang is an expert at setting up. The people were interested and a few questions were asked. Andy asked three questions. He knows how to work a room.

For this experiment to work we will change the day and even the hour of the next one. Because the Café needs to make money some sort of payment at the door will have to happen. I know at least four photographers who could give lectures. Could they be called Photography & Coffee?

Now I will diverge to point out that Diane Arbus had a show. On the next day of her show the world was still the same. She popped some barbiturates, got into a warm bath and slit her wrists.

While I am not suicidal, I discovered not “Post Opening Blues” but something I call “After the Hanging 

Blues”. It seems to me that it is never better than the moment before you put that last framed photograph on the wall. I have had many of these. It is downhill after that. And especially as a couple of days after the opening I might run into a person who I invited and did not show up. The person will ask, “How was the opening?” I think but don’t say ----you!

I spent to weeks (they were awfully pleasant) working on my flash drive PowerPoint. But after tonight, with nothing happening tomorrow, Sunday, I feel empty.

The reason is that I must be a melancholic Argentine.

Had Rosemary attended the presentation with me, I would now not feel so empty. She would have pointed out all my mistakes and offered advice. 

The silence of the cats is deafening.       

One of my Powerpoint slides had the two pictures illustrating this blog. Some years ago, when I was teaching at  Focalpoint on 10th Avenue, the bookstore next door, Book Warehouse, was closing. Most of the books had been sold but there was an Edward Hopper booklet of his sketches. I bought it. Inside I found Hopper's self-portrait. It was then that I understood that my artist friend Neil Wedman had been hiding from me for many years that indeed he looks like Edward Hopper.

Today has been an up and down day that sort of finished as an up one. It was not until early morning that I found out where my very large files of Arthur Erickson had wound up. They had been stored at Leap Creative (they celebrated yesterday!) and both they and I had forgotten them. I don’t know how I could have handled the loss as I am the photographer that photographed Erickson more than anyone. We were friends.

I cannot possibly forget how a few months before he died he was sitting alone at a table in a function run by Diane Farris. Nobody wanted to sit with him because he had Alzheimer’s.  I went to his table and when I sat down I said, “Arthur I believe that you may have been influenced by Mexican/Spanish architect Felix Candela. He smiled.

An example of a Candela hyperbolic paraboloid. blog

We then had an intelligent conversation for about 50 minutes on the hyperbolic paraboloid. Think of the old TWA bulding in the John F. Kennedy International Airport in NY>

A hyperbolic paraboloid is a three dimensional; double ruled surface that is generated by two sets of parallel lines that are in turn not parallel to each other. All cross sections of this paraboloid along the axis of symmetry yield parabolas. Study.com

I will treasure our conversation until I meet my soon to happen oblivion.

Tomorrow I am giving a lecture at the C41 Café 2948 West 4^th Ave from 6 to 8 on the theme Photography Inspired in Art.  I am not int the least nervous so until the lecture I really have nothing to do tomorrow.

As I lay in bed tonight with Niño (my male cat) on top of me I felt guilty about not writing my blog. I was also hungry.

Many who may have read my blogs in the past might know that with Rosemary now gone everything I do every day is in her memory. I like to sort of quote St. Luke where Christ is parting bread at the last supper and says to his apostles, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

Rosemary had curious eating habits. She had a fondness for eating tomato sandwiches in the evening. So I made myself one and as I ate it I remembered the love of my life.

She will be proud in my mind tomorrow when I give my lecture although with her around she might have pointed out some of the mistakes I will probably make.

Left my daughter Hilary crying. She is now 52 - Niña and me

As an 81-year-old former photographer I tell people that I am obsolete, redundant, retired and inconsequential.

C41 Café (2948 West 4^th Avenue) owner Andy Wang has made me feel useful. I will be giving a PowerPoint lecture this Saturday, march 2 from 6 to 8. What is C41? (explanation below)

For a long time I thought I was going to die with what I think is useful information in my head. Thanks to Wang’s enthusiasm for photography I will be able to unload (impart?) some of it.

My grandmother, my mother and I were teachers. I did not become a full-fledged photographer until 1977 when I got an assignment from Malcolm Parry’s Vancouver Magazine.

I am, then, a teacher who became a photographer. As a teacher it is my obligation to inspire and not to disapprove if someone does not know that C41 is the Kodak chemical system used to this day, around the world to process colour negative film.

The problem with many photographers, in this century, is that they do not have the direction, nagging of art directors and designers that I had. These new photographers must find their own way. On Saturday I hope I can help them find a direction to better photographs.

The write-up that Pancouver Editor Charlie Smith did on me is lovely. I worked with him when he was a writer at Harvey Southam’s Equity Magazine (it was a business magazine). It was then that I noted Smith’s astounding memory for facts, tiny facts that escaped most people. He became the Editor of the Georgia Straight when it was still a journalistic force in Vancouver. Smith’s ability to draw out information from, to us, unknown sources makes him, in my opinion, the best investigative reporter of this city.

Charlie Smith - Pancouver 

It will be interesting to find out how many people will show up at this Saturday’s lecture at the C41. Besides my PowerPoint I will have a show and tell.

New York Times (now gone) columnist On Language for the New York Times, William Safire said that any person giving a PowerPoint and reading what is in it, would be defined as “Death by Powerpoint.” You will all be alive when I finish my lecture.

Charlie Smith probably knows what I know about Safire. He had a fondness and obsession for women that had ankles that he could use his thumb and index finger to "circumnavigate".

William Safire

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.

A preview

 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.

K - 25 February 2024

Einstein's First Postulate

For example, a car's motion is measured relative to its starting point or the road it is moving over, a projectile's motion is measured relative to the surface it was launched from, and a planet's orbit is measured relative to the star it is orbiting around.

I remember as a young boy in Buenos Aires being in a train while another train, on the other track, was going in the same direction. If it had not been for the vibration I would have affirmed that both trains were stationary.

It was Einstein who said that reference points were important in order to determine motion.

As a budding magazine photographer in Vancouver around 1977, I had little idea of what a good photograph was. The first art director I worked with at Vancouver Magazine, Rick Staehling, bought many American magazines like Esquire & Sports Illustrated. He would show me photographs in them and would then assign me to take pictures inspired from what I had seen. His inspiration and his treatment of my photograph can be seen in this blog.

Stanley Park - Rick Staehling

I believe that in this century and it today’s date of February 25, 2024, that I know a good photograph when I see one. In Vancouver,now, that is almost an impossible as I have lost my reference points. Journalism with magazines and newspapers is just about dead.

One of my steady references is the NYTimes. I have had a daily delivered paper subscription now for 25 years. That helps. But few of my peers are “still” (I hate that word) taking pictures. The days of looking at a Saturday Night Magazine (I worked for 3 of its incarnations) and being wowed by a photograph are gone.

Saturday Night  

Saturday Night & Gillian Guess

And so I must trust my own knowledge of what makes a good photograph a good one.

Today I photographed a former student from 16 years ago called K. She contacted me through Messenger (I had not seen or heard from her since I taught her portrait photography) and said she wanted to meet and perhaps take some pictures. This I did today.

One of the techniques I used, besides taking 120 Rollei Infrared film with my Mamiya (Will take the one roll to the Lab tomorrow), is the ½ second slow shutter, at 800 ISO, with modeling light but no flash from a small softbox. I further make the shot more complicated by focusing that Fuji X-E3 on a large mirror at the end of my small Kits studio.

This is the second time I have used this method and it almost seems too easy. Important to this process is the work I do in levels on LAB with my 19 year-old Photoshop 8.

I particularly like using the mirror as it includes me. I thank K and hope that she will be persuaded to pose again. I find her most interesting as she is 56 years old. As the old man that I am, I can no longer tolerate the perfection of youth.