Saturday, August 17, 2024

17 August 2024

 

My driving skills are pretty good because I believe I have an excellent peripheral vision. This talent, since Rosemary died, is now a downer.

When I drive I can sense the empty seat next to me. When I am in the garden and I may be looking at one of my hostas  but I can feel the presence of one of her roses or perennials. The worst place is in our bed. I lie on one side and I can note that empty spot on my right that Niña has taken over.

That sensation of Rosemary not being there on my right I call her empty presence. When I walk Niño around the block, almost every day, and take Rosemary’s route, I can feel as if she might be behind me. I wonder what the feeling of someone behind me if it has a word like peripheral?

That beautiful Spanish word for share compartir which literally means to break bread with is one that I think of all the time. Living alone takes away that wonderful action, one that in some way is partially replenished by sharing the presence, the real presence of Niño and Niña.

Today my granddaughter Rebecca is celebrating her 27th birthday but without her family. She will not answer her phone so I cannot call her. Texting a greeting is anathema to me. I have hundreds of photographs of all our family birthdays with someone blowing a cake. I almost became tired taking them. Now I know that those ceremonies will not happen again. I will miss them. Rosemary would have agreed.

 

En 1977 en un intercambio con la aerolínea Mexicana de Aviación me dieron boletos de viaje y alojamiento en México por mis transparencias Kodachrome.

Fui a Oaxaca. En el palacio municipal tuve que ir para registrarme. Pasó por mi vista una hermosa mujer con un vestido muy mexicano. Entablé una conversación con ella y me dijo que representaba a la revista Siempre.  Agregó que estaba investigando anticonceptivos herbáceos indígenas. Se llamaba Ana Victoria.

Más tarde la vi en el Zócalo en un café en los portales con su mamá. Me invitó a visitarla a su hotel.

Apareció con su vestido mexicano y noté que no tenía ropa interior. Le tomé unas fotos en el jardín. Me invitó a acompañarla a Puerto Escondido. Le dije que tenía obligaciones con la aerolínea y no podía.

Fue entonces que me dijo algo que nunca me olvidaré. Los hombres son todos, máquinas que quieren ser humanos. "Tú eres un hombre muy humano que quiere ser máquina."

Desde esa fecha con mi constante nostalgia por el calor de la gente de Mexico me la he imaginado como La Malinche.

Pero también pienso en la versión española de una mujer llamada Doña Marina. De la Doña Marina tengo una linda historia narrada por Paco Taibo 1. Aquí el enlace.

 

La muchacha de la izquierda, como Doña Marina, se llama Ivette Hernández. Es de León, Guanajuato. Vive en Vancouver. Fue alumna mía cuando enseñaba en una escuela de fotografía. Cuando terminó mi curso es cuando le pregunté si quería hacer una serie de fotografías basadas en nuestra nostalgia mutua por México. El rebozo que tiene puesto es de la colección de rebozos de mi 
Rosemary. Cuando Rosemary y nuestras hijas, muy niñas, nos mudamos a una casita en Arboledas, Estado de México, compré un colorín para el jardín. Siempre he creido que plantar un arbolito al mudarme me trae suerte. El pendiente que luce es parte de una joyería que mandamos a hacer con un joyero llamado Jaime Vidal. El tenía un café cerca del Cine Chapultepec que frecuentaba un joven ajedresista llamado Homero Aridjis. El centro del pendiente es una semilla de la flor de nuestro colorín.

Friday, August 16, 2024

Rosa 'Darcey Bussell' - 16 August 2024

I started blogging in January 2006. Since then I have written 6206 (including this one) I did not know then that by mating my photographs and scanographs with poetry (Borges, Dickinson, Cortázar, William Carlos Williams and many more) I would somehow gain a considerable literacy. 

When today I saw this rose that was past it, I found that it was beautiful. Many years ago my grandmother and I went to gallery opening in Mexico City of a Filipino painter. On the wall there was a painting of dirty Mexican huarache. We confronted the artist and told him, "Why did you do this?" His answer is one that has remained in my memory. "Ah, the beauty of ugliness."

 

A Dead Rose – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

O Rose! who dares to name thee?

No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet;

But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubble-wheat,---

Kept seven years in a drawer---thy titles shame thee.

 

The breeze that used to blow thee

Between the hedgerow thorns, and take away

An odour up the lane to last all day,---

If breathing now,---unsweetened would forego thee.

 

The sun that used to smite thee,

And mix his glory in thy gorgeous urn,

Till beam appeared to bloom, and flower to burn,---

If shining now,---with not a hue would light thee.

 

The dew that used to wet thee,

And, white first, grow incarnadined, because

It lay upon thee where the crimson was,---

If dropping now,---would darken where it met thee.

 

The fly that lit upon thee,

To stretch the tendrils of its tiny feet,

Along thy leaf's pure edges, after heat,---

If lighting now,---would coldly overrun thee.

 

The bee that once did suck thee,

And build thy perfumed ambers up his hive,

And swoon in thee for joy, till scarce alive,---

If passing now,---would blindly overlook thee.

 

The heart doth recognise thee,

Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweet,

Doth view thee fair, doth judge thee most complete,---

Though seeing now those changes that disguise thee.

 

Yes, and the heart doth owe thee

More love, dead rose! than to such roses bold

As Julia wears at dances, smiling cold!---

Lie still upon this heart---which breaks below thee!

 

Thursday, August 15, 2024

Rebecca &  Hydrangea macrophylla 'Ayesha' - Fuji X-3 Photograph 15 August 2024

 

Rosemary & Rosa 'Bathsheba' 15 August 2024

 

After the almost four years since Rosemary died it is evident to me that she was the mater-familias and kept our family together. That feeling of unity is pretty well disappearing. I can add to that, the 20^th century concept of a grandmother or grandfather has changed. I am  simply an old man to my granddaughters.

It is difficult for me to conceive of this as it was my grandmother who gave me a lot of my education and saved me from whippings from my parents because she said I was an artist and they had to be more understanding.

One of my granddaughters is 22 and the other is going to be 27 this Saturday. I wonder if they will ever see in me what they saw when they were little girls. I am a believer in statistics so I think I will be gone by the time they realize that the old man is also their grandfather.

Every day, when I get up in the morning to feed Niño and Niña, as I begin to go down the stairs, I am faced by this portrait I took of Rebecca when she might have been 7 or 8. I remember that my eldest daughter Alexandra did her makeup. Light from the white wall that was then Eaton’s reflected into my studio. Arthur Erickson called that light in my studio, God’s Light. I decided to dispense with my lighting equipment.

I have often written that my eldest daughter tends to have a melancholic look on her face. She might have inherited some of it from Rosemary who was serious lots of the time.

I am wondering if Rebecca did not inherit that sad look from Rosemary via her mother Hilary (she is a smiler).

It was Rebecca’s other grandfather who often asked me why I did not ask Rebecca or Lauren to smile when I took their portraits.

While most will think what I will write here is bunk, I believe that eye contact, serious eye contact with the camera, precisely at the level of my subject’s eyes, will result in a portrait that somehow peers into the person’s soul. Does a smile hide it?  I believe it does.

By now many must understand that I use my scanner not only to scan my negatives and slides but also to scan my plants. They might also see that I combine plants with photographs on the scanner or framed photographs with plants. Simply put I use my scanner as a table-top camera.

Today I discovered something new for me. It all started when I scanned several lovely yellow (almost orange) Rosa ‘Bathsheba’ blooms.  I could not throw them away so I cut their stems and placed them on a nice ceramic tray with water. I call them floaters and I usually place the floaters on my dining room table.

I figured I could do something else. The result is in this blog, as is, the one where I combine Rebecca’s sad portrait with my Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Ayesha’.

From afar I hope Rebecca has a nice birthday and I also hope she succeeds on all her dreams.

I hope that she may one day knock on my door, and when I open, it she will say, “¿Papi como estás?”

 

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Lauri Stallings & Rosa 'Darcey Bussell' - 14 August 2024

 Lots of Lauri Stallings

I began to photograph dance (modern and ballet) in 1991. Since then many spectacular dancers have faced my camera.

English Rose Rosa ‘Darcey Bussell’ is one of my two best red roses. She is named after the retired English ballerina of that name.

When I saw the unopened perfection of the rose today, I knew that there was only one dancer in my large collection of dancers that would equate to perfection. She is Florida-born Lauri Stallings. She danced for Ballet BC for many years until she moved to Atlanta where she started her own dance company.

Such was her style, different to all other dancers in Ballet BC, that I could watch just her ankles to her dance shoes and I knew she was the one dancing.

There is one singular performance of hers that happened on January 22, 1988. It was in Serge Bennathan's In and Around Kozla Street. She danced with the electrifying Miroslav Zydowicz. As I watched them dance, they twirled around and around - their lips seemingly glued together - I asked Rosemary how long she thought the kiss was and, I had a revelation, which I whispered to her: "Ballet is about sex." She hushed me, pointing out that Stallings' boyfriend, Rick Carvlin, was sitting next to us. He had heard me. "They kiss for one minute and 58 seconds," he said. "I have timed them before." 

Lauri Stallings,perfection in red hair to match with her fiery passion that of my Rosa 'Darcey Bussell''