New Year’s Eve in Vancouver this 2024, was a letdown. Increasingly this city is becoming sterile. It has no flavour. I fell asleep at 12:05 after I heard about 5 puny firecrackers.

My idea of a wonderful New Year’s was the first I had with my Rosemary in Veracruz on December 31 1967.

I had met her about two weeks before, so I had taken her to show her off to my mother who was a school teacher (a one room school house in her house). Her students were the children of the engineers and employees of Alcan.

Rosemary immediately had a problem coping with the heat and humidity of Veracruz so she took many showers and sometimes she would yell to tell me that there were flying cockroaches in the bathroom.

Since we were not yet married my mother gave us separate rooms. I checked the doors. One squeaked so I oiled it. I believe that since our fist daughter was born 9 months later I can guess how it happened.

Both Rosemary and I noticed that in comparison to the 73250 ft altitude of Mexico City, sea level in Veracruz carried sound better. Sounds were louder. We would go to the lovely café La Parroquia which was in the Zócalo kitty corner with the main church. We would sit under the outside portales and marimba groups would play. With a little tip I could coax the players to sing a song on the spot that would contain the name of Rosemary and that she was a blonde.In the record scanned here, a record of my mother's that was recorded in 1940 it contains a honest and authentic La Bamba where each member of the group (they all have different voices) they all sing extemporaneously and make up the words as they sing.

La Bamba - Andrés Huesca

The old trams would pass by and the noise of their clanging added to the charms of the port city of Veracruz.

But it was on New Year’s Eve at the stroke of midnight that all the ships of the port, in unison would play their sirens.

These sounds are the sounds of a real New Year’s Eve, my first with that blonde called Rosemary.

Scanned 31 December 2024

 

My Manila-born grandmother, Dolores Reyes de Irureta Goyena, was born in the 19th century and was educated in Valencia, Spain. By some lucky quirk my Abuelita met my wife Rosemary in 1970 before she died.

My Abuelita  or Abue as I called her, was ahead of her time and she educated me as my mother was a busy teacher trying to make ends meet in Buenos Aires and then in Mexico City. Abuelita would not say, “Alex, don’t do that.” She would say, “Alex if you do this this is what is going to happen…”

Because of her Spanish education Rosemary and I adopted many of her customs. One of them was a 19^th century Spanish custom of eating 12 grapes in the 12 seconds when our mantel clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve.

This year I have decided to keep the custom. But I will eat 24 grapes. The extra 12 are in memory of my Rosemary.

Rosemary and I would go shopping for nice grapes on the 31st. I bought grapes a few days ago and I thought they will do even if they are not of the perfection that would have delighted Rosemary.

Cynics would say that it was far easier to drink a glass of wine. In the scan here there are 24 grapes even if you cannot see them.

Rosemary Waterhouse-Hayward

Corina Poore

Susy Bornstein

Vivir consiste en construir futuros recuerdos- El Túnel de Ernesto Sabato

Living consists in building future remembrances.

Today I went with Hilary to see the just-released film about Bob Dylan – The Complete Unknown. After this fine film I was driving Hilary home and I immediately knew that I would write this.

Musically I have always been an idiot. When my Lomas High School Students in Mexico City asked me if I like Alice Copper I replied,”No, who’s she?” Ditto when a connoisseur friend asked me about Carmina Burana.

I was saved from musical perdition by 3 women.

The first, Corina Poore my first real girlfriend in Buenos Aires in 1966 who was not Argentine because she was born in Uruguay introduced me to Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Peter Paul and Mary by singing their songs with her fine voice and guitar playing. I had no idea of what folk music was all about.

The second woman was my second girlfriend. Susy Bornstein was Argentine. She said I was culturally impaired. She took me to the Teatro Colón to see my first operas. One was The Fiery Angel by Prokofiev and the other Orpheus ed Euridice by Gluck. Then she forced me to go to see a film called Help!. To this day that is my fave Beatles song.

The reason I was so musically impaired was that I had adopted a liking for jazz before I met these women. I liked Miles Davis,Dave Brubeck,Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan.

Back in Mexico in 1967 I met Rosemary who introduced me to her likes. By the time we were living in Arboledas, Estado de México she liked for me to play Tapestry by Carole King and she thought            Donovan was lovely. If I played any Piazzolla she would leave to her room as she knew that Piazzolla would remind me of Argentina and my two former girlfriends.

She did like Peter, Paul and Mary but I never did confide that Mary’s straight blonde hair and bangs reminded me of her.

As I watched the film with Hilary the thoughts of those former women of my life coincided with Ernesto Sábato’s quote on memory.

Driving Hilary to Burnaby on Lougheed Highway, means I pass by the corner of Springer Avenue, where we lived when we moved to Vancouver. I try not to look but I can sense it and memories pour in.

I would modify Sábato’s sentence to:

Living in the present consists in building future memories from our past.

April

Of my primera vez I wrote it in link above. It was not until Rosemary, our two daughters and I moved to Vancouver that my attitude progressed. But it was stifled by the fact that I was not known as a photographer so I washed cars for Tilden-Rent-A-Car for two years until I began to get small photo jobs. Because I had lots of idle time by the late 70s I was going to Vancouver’s nudist Wreck Beach. Rosemary would tell me that I was wasting my time and that I should find better activities to while away the hours.

I stuck to my guns and started taking photographs of women using the then latest Kodak b+w films like SO-115 and SO-410. I shot a lot with Kodak B+w Infrared Film that added a lovely luminosity to skin.

It was only years later that I learned that my nude photographs helped me shoot portraits and full length shots for magazine assignments. I could tell how a body looked naturally with clothing on. That and my dance photography helped lots.

In the late 90s I had many one man shows featuring my nudes plus I participated in group shows at that wonderful photography gallery called The Exposure Gallery which was on Beatty Street.

Now, alas(!) in this 21^st century, and particularly in Vancouver, we have onerous (my opinion) on showing anybody photos of nude persons.

It was around 1978 when I told Rosemary that in order to compete in the free-lance photography business I needed a good studio lighting system. I had found a photographer in Victoria who was selling his for $3200. At that time I was working for a gay publication called Bi-Line. It consisted mostly of photographs of nude men. I was their photographer. I went to our local Burnaby Bank of Montreal to borrow money. I faced an elderly dour Scottish woman who asked me, “What is your collateral?” I plunked a pile of Bi-Lines on her desk. After perusing them she said, “You are a good photographer. How much do you need?” I bought the lights.

Yesterday as I am increasingly putting an order to my photo files I took out the folder called Wreck Beach. I was able to discern the first two nudes I ever took there. In the scan you will notice the frame numbers. It was in that first role where my subject who was called April posed for a photograph that I call my first great nude photograph. Because I did not brush off the black sand from her feet I see in this photograph what I have always tried to avoid. I hate absolute perfection. The sand adds an edge.

And thanks to Rosemary and April the rest is history. Through the years I would get phone calls from unknown women who would ask me to take their photographs. I would direct them to portrait photographers around town. They would then add, “I want different photographs.”  That word was code for nude.

One woman who called me was up-front. I am a fitness teacher at a YWCA and I want my body recorded before age collapses it. Best of all she paid me well.

The phone calls are not so frequent as before but they keep coming. I calculate that I have around 700 women files involving either little clothing or none at all. Some of the women would pose intermittently for me for years. Some of the individual files may have 600 negatives. I have lots.

I almost despair at noting their beauty but knowing that they will never see the light of day again with the now pervasive “community standards”.

It’s such a shame. But I would like to finish here with a funny note. Some years ago Rosemary and I were at a Safeway. I noticed a woman that was nearby. It was December, near Christmas. I said, “Rosemary it’s April in December, don’t you think?” I kept repeating it. The woman came up to me and said, “So my name is April. So what?”

I never saw her again.

Rosemary Elizabeth Waterhouse-Hayward - Mexico City - 1968

La primera vez…

Federico García Lorca

La primera vez

no te conocí.

La segunda, sí.

Dime

si el aire te lo dice.

Mañanita fría

yo me puse triste,

y luego me entraron

ganas de reírme.

No te conocía.

Sí me conociste.

No me conociste.

Ahora entre los dos

se alarga impasible,

un mes, como un

biombo de días grises.

La primera vez

no te conocí.

La segunda, sí.

En chiste, en mis biografías escribo que cuando nací en el Sanatorio Anchorena en Buenos Aires, el 31 de agosto de1942, un fotógrafo con un flash de magnesio fue testigo. Supe en ese momento que algún día sería un fotógrafo.

In jest in my biographies I write that when I was born in the Sanatorio Anchorena in Buenos Aires, on August 31, 1942, the event was recorded by a photographer with ythe burst of a magnesium flash. I knew then that some day I would become a photographer.

Más en serio, tengo viva memoria que mi mamá me llevó a la Lincoln Library de la Embajada Estadounidense sobre la Calle Florida en 1950. Abrí un libro llamado American Heritage donde vi fotografías de la guerra civil tomadas for Timothy O’Sullivan y Mathew Brady. Los soldados vivos no se veían diferentes a los hombres caminando en Florida. Y los muertos, al verlos, me di cuenta, por primera vez el concepto de la muerte. Y, además, quedé impresionado que los soldados vivos, vivos en las fotos, habían muerto.

Seriously I have a vivid memory that my mother in 1950 took me to the Lincoln Library, associated with the American Embassy on Calle Florida. I picked up a book called American Heritage and in it I saw photographs taken by Timothy O’Sullivan and Mathew Brady of Confederate soldiers during the civil war. When I looked at the dead ones and the live ones they looked no different from the men walking outside in Florida. But I was struck, my first time, of the concept of death and that the live soldiers, were now also dead.

Mi vida ha sido plagada por muchas primeras veces, algunas lindas, igual que las de muchos otros. Una en particular se me ocurrió en estos últimos días del año. Porque extraño a mi Rosemary, casados 52 años, que falleció el 9 de diciembre 2020, me he metido en mis archivos de fotos de familia y encontré las primeras fotos de una mujer desnuda, ella, que tomé en 1968.

My life has been plagued, just like anybody else’s by first times. One in particular occurred to me as I am experiencing a steady grief of missing my Rosemary who died 9 December 2020. We had been married for 52 years. Looking into my family negatives I looked again at the first nude pictures I took of anybody. They are of Rosemary. She posed for me at the end of 1968. I have no memory of what we talked about and why I even took them.  

 Toda mi vida he sufrido con el problema de que cuando tengo la curiosidad de preguntar, la única persona con la respuesta ha muerto.

And I have been plagued all my life that when I am curious to ask, the only person who can answer is dead.