It was in 1969 that I took my first nudes. These involved my wife Rosemary (we had been married a year and a half ) and a few with our first daughter Alexandra.

La Primera Vez 

Rosemary and Alexandra

We moved to Vancouver in 1975 and by 1977 I found myself going to Vancouver’s clothing optional  Wreck Beach. My Rosemary told me I was wasting my time and that I could do more useful stuff. I did not know then that when I would first meet animator Marv Newland there, that the man would influence me in many ways.

It was at wreck where I started taking nudes using my Asahi Pentax S-3 with experimental Kodak Film like SO-115 and S0-4. The women did no object to me taking their photographs. There was one quiet lovely woman called April. My roll of Kodak Black and White Infrared Film were my first Vancouver nudes. I did not quite know what I was doing but there was one single shot that set me on my course of becoming a good photographer. What made the photograph special for me is that I left the black sand on the soles of her feet. I believe that a “perfect” photograph can be uninteresting. It is the flaw that draws in the eyes.

My photographs of April (there are many as I even photographed her at her home) I had filed inside a thick file called Wreck Beach. A few weeks ago when I went to look for the photograph, the negatives and the contact sheet they were gone!

I was extremely upset even though I had two very good darkroom 8x10s.

Then when I was to photograph a friend with my Mamiya RB-67 camera with a lens cap pinhole I looked at photographs I had taken 20 years ago. And there were the negatives and contact sheet.      

There is a humorous addition to the story. Some years ago I was with Rosemary at Safeway during Christmas. I told her, “Rosemary doesn’t it feel like April?” I repeated that a few times. A nearby woman faced me and said, “So my name is April, so what?” I regret that I did not get her phone number or enquire about her last name. At Wreck Beach nobody ever divulged their last name.

It pains me now that in this 21^st century I cannot show to anybody my lovely Wreck Beach nudes.