Margo Kane - Fujiroid peel - 14 December 2024

February 2008

Without going into details, when minutes before Rosemary died, she asked, “Am I dying?” I can assert that my small family fractured.

Distractions like reading, taking photographs, scanning plants and experimenting with new methods by using my scanner help a bit.

The problem is that I no longer feel useful. With that said I have no doubt that my two cats need me (a friend in need is a friend indeed – that cliché). If I were to feel suicidal (I am not but I do think about it), I know I have to wait for Niño and Niña to die. Who would take care of them if I go first?

Two my granddaughters I am not a grandfather. I am just an old man.

But there are moments when I do feel some relief. That came when Margo Kane showed up today for her portrait. She wanted to get a new image for her Indigenous program being planned for March. I had previously photographed her in March 2008. The prospect of using the same film camera and a similar pose 16 years later excited me.

While I used my Mamiya RB-67 with the 90mm lens and 100ISO film I did take one photograph using my digital camera with the now tried and true procedure of  grossly underexposing the photograph by using a modelling light and my Fuji X-E3 set at 200ISO, 1/30 of a second and at the strange f-stop f-7.1.The result is an absolute black rectangle that I then treat with my 20-year-old Photoshop 8. The result has an odd colour (that I like) and digital noise that resembles that of fast film grain.

For the other two pictures I took, I used a Polaroid back for my Mamiya and I shot it with Fuji 100IS) instant film.

In that last century, after peeling the Polaroids we would throw the peels away. Alas that was a mistake we only corrected this century with a scanner! The process is to immediately place the peel on the scanner (if you wait the image fades) and rub it well onto the glass. Once scanned, I reverse it in Photoshop (or not).

So thank you Margo for making my day and giving me the idea that I may still be useful.

Judy Brown - Mexico City 1962 - Rosemary Healey Waterhouse-Hayward - Mexico City 1968

Today, 13 Friday 2024, was a pleasant day as I celebrated with Alexandra, Hilary’s birthday which is tomorrow. We went to our fave Italian Restaurant, La Piazza Dario, at the Italian Cultural Centre.

As I looked at the candle on our table I immediately had my idea for today’s blog. It involved two women in my life whom I photographed with just the light of a candle.

The first one was really my first girlfriend. I was 20 and I met her at Mexico City College in Mexico City. Her name was Judy Brown. Even though I was a nerd (before the word had been invented) I remember being daring enough to ask her to take her to Veracruz to meet my mother. On the bus she was reluctant for me to put my head on her lap in our bus. She confessed that she had a boyfriend called Allan in Los Angeles. Her claim to fame was that her father played tennis with Charles Schulz who created Peanuts.

She went back to LA and I never heard from her again. All I have are photographs that I took using an extremely fast film called Agfa Isopan Record with my Asahi Pentax S-3 and a 85mm f-1.8 Komura lens.

In early 1968, after I had married my Rosemary on8 February, I took some photographs of her in the nude. In the contact sheet I spotted some where I had used a candle. The film was some sort of very fast Kodak film.

And that is how the last became my real first.

Today for me, in spite of the rain and gloomy sky, was a day when I could smile.

Indigenous Margo Kane call me today. She said, “I need my portrait taken. Do you still take them?” You can imagine how I rapidly replied in glee that I was indeed. She will be coming to my little studio this Saturday. I will shoot her with my digital Fuji X-E3 so that she can immediately use the pictures for a festival she is participating in. But (and this is important) I will replicate the former portrait I took of her using the same film and my Mamiya R-B67 camera. I love the continuity of portraits of a person with a longish time lapse.

Margo Kane - February 2008

 

I smiled today because yesterday my youngest daughter and I went to see the film The Return. It is comforting to know someone who wants to see the same films I want to.

Also yesterday Hilary and I went through more piles of family photographs. Hilary has a better idea of some of the dates. I have a two drawers of a metal filing cabinet in my office that is full of files in folders that are dated. I will place these there.

In those piles I found some photographs I had taken of Rosemary through the years. I had selected some in my blogging history (beginning in 2006) but there were many I had forgotten and many I had not seen.

This morning I snipped all the Rosemary negatives and placed them in a dedicated folder labelled Rosemary.

It is overwhelming to be a portrait photographer who took thousands of family pictures. The fun part is that I have scanned five of these “new” findings. In them I noticed (would have I noticed these before?) two accidental double exposures in which I obviously had the intention of showing her fabulous legs!

So, yes, this morose man sometimes does smile.

As my daughter Hilary is helping me to sort through thousands of family photographs and others in two large plastic boxes, it has become overwhelmingly obvious that I have taken many photographs since I started with my Pentacon-F SLR in 1958. Because I worked mostly as a portrait photographer for magazines and newspapers portraits make up a lot of them.

But I did not always shoot portraits. Some years ago I had a show at the Pendulum Gallery in downtown Vancouver of very large photographs that I took of secret gardens (mostly in the roofs of tall buildings) in Vancouver.

Secret Gardens

We found a very large file of these photographs in an equally large courier envelope. I proceeded to throw most of them away. I put them in the garbage.

A few days ago as I was walking outside my duplex gate into the lane I spotted the negative that I have scanned here. I like the idea of the random saving of a negative I had thrown away. To me what makes the negative that much more interesting is that I used the now discontinued Kodak B+W Infrared Film.

I would like to point out here that having a good scanner is a good tool to immediately satisfy my doing what I am doing right now  which is to write about it.

Filomena Cristeta de Irureta Goyena Hayward - Rosemary Elizabeth Healey Watehouse-Hayward

My mother, Rosemary and Alexandra - Veracruz 1969

I believe that thought, at old age, (I am82) keeps my head marbles in action. While I sometimes feel guilty about not reading as much I know that Pre-Socratic philosophers and Socrates himself had no books to read. They thought.

Thanks to Bill Richardson’s concept of Bunny Watson in that disparate themes or ideas might have things in common and my belief that our ability to associate is what makes us human, of late I have come to and important conclusion - When I married my Rosemary I married my mother.

Besides the fact that my mother and Rosemary adored each other there is another salient link.

My mother was given the nickname of Sarah Bernhardt because she was always over acting (so we thought) her physical ills. And so it was that in 1971 my mother was in bed in our Arboledas, Estado the México home in the presence of Rosemary and me.  She told us, “This time I am really going to die.” She did. We heard her breathe in and then not breathe out.

There is an important comparative link with Rosemary in that sometime late afternoon of December 9, 2020 Rosemary in our bed asked, “Am I dying?”

Both women were in a position that we who are alive cannot comprehend. We might die vaporized in an airplane crash or of a heart attack in our sleep in the middle of the night, but we cannot understand what it is to know when your death is imminent.

So much about how my mother and Rosemary had equivalent deaths.

My mother sacrificed her puny teaching salary, as a single mother, to educate me. She sent me to an expensive boarding Roman Catholic high school in Austin and paid for many of my university failures. She financed the purchase of Rosemary’s and my house in Arboledas. My mother stayed with us for two years until she died.

Looking back at this, I now understand that Rosemary made many financial sacrifices so that this former macho could buy a couple of terrible Fiat X-19s and one even worse Maserati Biturbo. She said, “Yes” to all my requests to buy expensive photographic equipment. She did not complain when in the late 90s I had many gallery shows with expensive matting and framing.

Just like my mother sacrificed for me, Rosemary did the same in our two daughters’ education and educational trips to Europe and South America.  With our two granddaughters Rosemary spared no expense to put them in ballet classes, piano and violin classes and had them accompany us in trips abroad.

My mother used to tell me that loving was doing. I can now assert that Rosemary would have agreed.

Love is doing

Camellia sasanqua 'Yulletide' 9 December 2024

 When people tell me or ask me, “What would have Rosemary wanted you to do?” I plainly object in silence. Rosemary was not always easy to predict when she was alive.

Today is the fourth anniversary of her death. I have run out of words like melancholic, sad, depressed, etc. Today I will opt for sombre. It is a sombre day. But I wanted to find something positive to smile about.

In the morning the thought finally came to me. Every year we would shop for a Camellia sasanqua ‘Yuletide’. It blooms around Christmas with lovely red flowers with yellow stamens. This camellia is tender and it does not seem to survive the year. The one from last year did not.

Yes, Rosemary would have immediately agreed with me that we would have to buy one and place it on our front door as our botanical Christmas decoration.

I called every garden centre in town. They had sold out. It seems that people have found out of the wonders of the plant. As a last resort I called the far-away Mandeville gardens. None of the phone numbers were answered. I was about to give up when a woman did answer and did tell me that they had several of them. I told her I was going to drive immediately to get. It was waiting for me. After paying $91.84 it was mine.

It felt almost a shame to cut one of the flowers to scan. I have several scans of the flowers from the past year. Somehow I did not think that was correct. It was cheating.

And so tonight, while it is a sombre night where I miss my Rosemary, at the very least, I do know that:

Rosemary would have wanted me to do this. And quoting a bit of St. Luke, I did it in remembrance of her.

Maple leaf from 7th Avenue fall 2023 - Rosa 'Princess Alexandra of Kent' 8 December 2024

Today is 8 December 2024. It is impossible for me to not remember that tomorrow will be the 4^th year anniversary of my Rosemary’s death.

The day is semi sunny and cold. The cats are inside.  I knew that I had to write something in remembrance of tomorrow’s sad anniversary.

There are some positive and fond remembrances that are personal. Personal, in that I am the good photographer that I am today, because Rosemary said yes to all my expensive equipment requests. She taught me to be careful in how I photographed hands. My portraits are good because of her urging.

Best of all in 1975 she made the decision that we (including our two daughters) had to move from Mexico City to Canada. Vancouver has been kind to my profession not only as a photographer but as a writer, too.

As I looked at the fall colouring on this English Rose, Rosa ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’, I know that I noticed because Rosemary taught me to notice details. She was a meticulous partner in my life for 52 years. The fall colouring on this rose, a favourite of hers, especially because we have a daughter called Alexandra, is lovely. People look at trees for fall colouring.

I did last year.I picked up a maple leaf on my street and put it by my record turntable. It has been there until now.

My photographic peers do not seem to understand or listen to me when I tell them of the wonders of the overlooked scanner particularly when it is a good one.The scan of the leaf is almost three dimensional. I am not sure that a macro photographic close-up would be as good.

I do know that my path to excellence has always been via Rosemary.