Saturday, March 23, 2024

George Waterhouse Hayward  - the first family writer

Blog 6049
 

I have given my oldest granddaughter, who has many talents that there are three professions that do not need a college education or degree. These are photography, writing and prostitution. I then add that prostitution should never be that third option.

While I went to university and even taught in a Jesuit university in Mexico City I became a photographer and a good one by the late 70s in Vancouver. And of course I never did study photography anywhere.

It was during the Islas Malvinas war that Vancouver Magazine editor, Malcolm Parry told me (he did not ask) to write something about my own experience in the Argentine Navy. He shot my portrait (it was on the cover!) and soon I was writing for several publications including a monthly garden column (Is gardening another self taught profession?) for Western Living Magazine.

Along the way in my writing career I was given advice by two writers. John Lekich told me that whatever I placed in the first paragraph of something I wrote would necessarily mention it in the last paragraph.

Writer Les Wiseman was quite precise, “Unless you are Charles Dickens you never begin in the beginning. You start in the middle and work both ways.” He added, “If you are writing about something you know nothing about, first do research and consult an expert.”

By the late 90s and early 20^th century I was being hired as both a writer and photographer particularly when the job was abroad. The magazines realized they could save on air tickets and hotels for a second person as I was both writer and photographer.

My father was a journalist in Buenos Aires, and alas he was not to know that I became a writer. But I think of him when I write and try to be pleasant and not overly critical. He was a kind man.

My mother and my aunt Dolly were both accomplished poets. I would never attempt to write a poem but I believe that thanks to them some of my sentences have good cadence.

My maternal grandmother (the only grandparent I ever knew) always reminded me that my grandfather Don Tirso de Irureta Goyena was the single member in the Philippines of the Real Academia Española which is dedicated to improving the knowledge of the Spanish language. And because of that constant reminding I do a lot of thinking in both languages, going back and forth comparing words that are shared in both languages and words that are unique.

Taking the advice of John Lekich about that first paragraph, I will mention that this photographer/writer (but not a prostitute) believes that if newspapers existed in Vancouver I could write a daily column with no problem. I must add that from that first halftone process photograph, Dec 2 1873, in a New York City newspaper of the Steinway Building, that photographs and copy from that moment became a symbiosis of copy (writing) and photographs or illustration. It helps in my writing that I can add my photographs.

 The Halftone Process

 

Friday, March 22, 2024

 

 Link to NY Times Obituary with no paywall

Tying up loose ends & beating on my own drum

 

David Finlay Breashears (December 20, 1955 – March 14, 2024)

Some years ago when I was teaching photography in a downtown place Called VanArts I had a student whose last name was Strand who asked me, “Alex can you show us a photograph of someone you photographed who is still alive for a magazine that still exists?”

His question floored me and I did not answer. I am 81 so my friends, family and people I photographed are meeting their oblivion with a repeated frequency.

One of those friends, writer Mark Budgen, about 23 years ago told me, “Alex you need not go to that joint on Broadway and Granville to buy the New York Times. You can get a subscription and it will be delivered to your door."

That ushered in a custom I had with my Rosemary where with little exception had us enjoying a daily breakfast in bed with the NYTimes and the Vancouver Sun. With her gone 3 years ago I keep the tradition. I must add that Budgen’s suggestion is that not only am I up to date with what is happening in the world but I have also gained and education in the arts.

It was today that I read the fine obituary of David Breashears by Clay Risen in my NYTimes and I well know, that locally and not in too many other places, would I have found out of this man's death.

For me meeting the man and taking his portrait brings memories of going to an early month end reunion of contributors (called a pissup) at Vancouver Magazine in the late 70s. I was new and awed by people that were working there. One was American photographer  James laBounty. I asked him who he was. He answered, “I am a conceptual photographer.” I turned around and thought, “This guy is full of ….”

I was not too long after, that I not only understood the concept of his conceptual, but I also started doing my own versions. I did involve going to the library (no internet) to research the subjects I was assigned to photograph. By the time I was assigned to photograph David Breashears in June 1999 for the Globe and Mail, I was fairly well known for my brand of conceptual photography.

Robert Bringhurst on a tree

How I came to use that in my portrait of Breashears is in the link below.

Tying up loose ends

And should I have the unlikely opportunity  meeting Strand and of answering his question now I would say, “Strand while Breashears is now dead, the NYTimes and the Globe and Mail are much in existence."

Thursday, March 21, 2024

George McWhirter & Homero Aridjis

 

Yesterday, Vancouver’s first Poet Laureate George McWhirter (a Belfastian or Belfaster) found out by the curious fact that the CBC instead of stressing the traffic conflicts on the two bridges to North Vancouver, decided to dip into a bit of culture and informed him:

2 Canadian translators make longlist for $130K Griffin Poetry Prize | CBC Books

The annual prize is the world's largest international prize for a single book of poetry written in or translated into English.

Griffin Prize

I find this astounding. If McWhirter wins he will have to lie low as people will want to be friends with him.

Meanwhile I can report here that I have a good friendship with McWhirter and his wife Angela, plus with Mexican poet, novelist and environmentalist Homero Aridjis, and his wife Betty Farber.

In that last century, photographers were notoriously supposed to be dumb (less bad sounding than stupid), illiterate and ignorant. Thanks to a four year Roman Catholic education in Austin, Texas I escaped that fate. It helped that I met many writers I had to work with. I love poetry.

 

 

Because McWhirter is over 80, just like Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Bowering, both will get a glowing obituary in this city only when they are gone. Such is the state of “No Memory Vancouver”.

To repeat my use of outstanding, I want to point out here the curious relationship of Aridjis and McWhirter. Would anybody know McWhirter speaks good Spanish and that he translates the poetry of perhaps the best living Mexican poet? My fave translation is Eyes to See Otherwise - Ojos de otro mirar - Selected Poems

Before I change the subject I want to place here a poem by McWhirter that is one of my favourites. It is from his 1995 incubus the dark side of the light (and yes in fine Latin American fashion his 1995 poetry book’s title is in lower case). The poems are about he and Angela spending some time in Cuautla, Mexico.

Impossible Papaya

A trunk

 

No leaves

No branches

 

For us to peer

Or birds to speak

At

 

A quintet

Of yellow knackers

Hanging. Vegetable flute

 

For the Sky

To razzle-dazzle down

 

Forcebreed the earth

The earth

 

With

Celestianl arpeggios

 

I am most positive that McWhirter knows that papaya is an unmentionable word in Cuba. Women have one and we men don’t.

Homero Aridjis, doesn’t often smile as much as his translator but he is poetic in his speech. This he once told me. “You Canadians don’t know where your Monarch Butterflies winter. We have always known. We just never knew where they came from.”

Homero Aridjis is known as the butterfly poet as most of those butterflies nest in his hometown of Contepec in the State of Michoacán.

 

This photographer takes time in reading novels by writers who are poets. I have to constantly stop and reread dazzling paragraphs. Such is the case for me of both McWhirter  ( I recommend his erotic The Gift of Women, 2014) and any of Aridjis's novels. His Memorias del Nuevo Mundo, 1988, is a definitive novelized account of the conquest of Mexico. Is a much better rendition than the only competition, Salvador de Madariaga's The Heart of Jade, 1942.

But I can also explain why it was that on a trip to Mexico City some years ago, I asked my Rosemary to lend me one of her black bras. Why? Read in the link below. It is about an Aridjis poem

Hotel Géneve - Tourist in 1934

I have no idea where I found out (I was around 18) about a statement that read, “Coincidence happens more often than not.”

I am currently reading a book by an Argentine novelist I did not know existed until my West Vancouver Argie friend, Roberto Dósil, insisted I read La Princesa Primavera by César Aira.

The story is about a youngish woman living in a little castle of the Panama mainland who translates bad romantic novels from French and English into Spanish.  The 118-page novel is written as one chapter. You find out how the intelligent princess navigates the fact that the writing before she translates is terrible. It all changes when a big black ship is seen at the horizon. Of course this is a magic realism novel.

 Should McWhirter have a look at it?

PS - In 1985 a writer, philosopher Ramón Xirau (taught me philosophy for two years at Mexico City College  1962/63) left his house and could not breathe. He went inside and called his friend Aridjis. Shortly after that the pair started El Grupo de los Cien, (Group of 100) made up of intellectuals, writers, poets, etc. They persuaded President Miguel de la Madrid to make automobile circulation in Mexico City to be one where even numbered and odd numbered license plates would alternate in their permission to be on the road. From there they went to whales, turtles and they had the government limit the  logging of Oyamel trees (fir trees) in Michoacán where Monarchs nested.

PSII The flannel shirt that Aridjis is wearing in my photograph was called "una canadiense" by Julio Cortázar in his Rayuela (Hopscotch). His protagonist suffers a cold Paris winter and decides to buy one.

 

 

 

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

In a few of these 6040 blogs I have written of my early attraction to the female sex. It began in kindergarten where I would lift up the skirt of one of the Diligenti quintuplets (three girls and two boys) in Buenos Aires.

My only awareness of my female side happened in the early 80s when I watched Art Bergmann perform with his passionate guitar playing.

Sarah Tonin

 

And for many years I have received emails or phone calls from women who tell me, “I want to be photographed by you.” This I quickly understood that they wanted to pose with little on.

For some years I wondered and thought and looked up the concept of eroticism. I quickly found out that the imagination of women for this sort of thing surpassed that of this man.

Now in March 2024 I have to assert that I am not interested in eroticism, tight yoga pants, and red carpet cleavage. I smile when I see a woman wearing a demure dress.

And, very important, I am only interested in one woman, Rosemary Elizabeth Healey Waterhouse-Hayward. And she is dead.

I miss the comfort of snuggling up to my grandmother or embracing my mother. I miss that human comfort that women have given me in all my years. I miss walking around the block with Rosemary.

To illustrate this blog I want to place here two photographs of Sarah Tonin (really four as these are sandwich scans of two negatives each where I have mixed one colour negative with a black and white one.

When I originally took them my intention was to show a beautiful woman at her best. But some of that eroticism crept in. Perhaps in this renewed version it has diminished.

I cannot speak for doctors as I am not one. But I am wondering if I am entering my clinical stage?

 

 

 

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

 

George Garrett

George Garrett (1934 – 18 March 2024)

Because I am 81, my concept of radio is that from the last century. I am unable to adjust to listening to CBC Radio in my car and having to suffer the messy situation of the two bridges linking our city with North Vancouver.

For me radio, or my awareness of its importance began in Buenos Aires on July 26, 1952. From that day, and for a year, on every evening, on any radio station (my mother liked to listen to LRA Radio del Estado, a sort of CBC with no bridges) all programs were interrupted). I would hear, “Son las veinte y veinticinco, hora en que Eva Perón entró en la inmortalidad,” or, it’s 20:25  the hour in when Eva Perón entered immortality.

Since that day I loved radio. When Rosemary and I were living in Mexico City (1968/75) we liked to listen to a station that was in English and on the hour it linked to CBC Radio in the US. It was in this station that I first heard and appreciated Dan Rather and laughed at the humour of Nicholas von Hoffman (“If you really want a kid, buy a baby goat.”)

And once in Vancouver, thanks to Malcolm (Mac) Parry’s Vancouver Magazine, I was able to photograph the “Captains of the Air” in 1984. See article and photos below this blog.

I have no recollection of the date, or what we spoke about, when I was assigned to photograph one of those last captains of the air, George Garrett, who died today. I have a vague memory that not too long ago, here in my Kits home, I was visited by him and a friend (and a friend of mine) George Planta. One word creeps in my mind when I think of Garret - intrepid.

I miss the fabulous diction of announcers like Barbara Budd and the humour of Bill Richardson (his program Bunny Watson inspired me to write in the way I write my blogs with what some might say is a distant association of this and that).

But I have a happy announcement to make here. I am a fan of a CBC Radio announcer called Neil Herland who has an accent most similar to that of CBC’s The Man of the Movies, Rick Staehling, who is sadly no longer with us. Herland sounds American just like Staehling. I can hear him on some early evenings and he is based in Montreal.

I have a secret to report here. That Captain of the Air, CBC’s Gloria Macarenko , when I see her in person, usually dining at la Bodega we converse in Spanish. Her diction in that language is perfect.

 

Gary Bannerman

Pat Burns

Barrie Clark

Jack Webster