Left - Gail Skrela, centre Andrea Hodge - right Lauri Stallings

Because I live alone with 2 cats I have plenty of time to do nothing. My specialty is now called bed rotting.

I have little obsessions to keep me busy so as not to think of my Rosemary who died four years ago. One of them is the personal pleasure in participating in Facebook’s so called stories. One frustration is that I do not know how to add a cutline to explain the why of the photograph posted. 

And so this time around I am going to write this blog explaining how that photograph came to be.

Although I was not known to be a fashion photographer I was approached by the Georgia Straight in October 1997 and asked if I could do something. I consulted my then friend David Boswell (he of The World’s Toughest  Milkman) and we came up with the idea of using the best room, Room 615, of the sleazy Hotel Marble Arch. The scenario involved members of Ballet BC, 3 women, Andrea Hodge, Gail Skrela and Lauri Stallings, and 2 men, MIroslaw Zydowicz and Todd Woffinden. The women would lure the two men and kill one of them with a snub-nosed .38 revolver.

In my files I found that I had kept the tear sheets (yellowed they are) from the published article.

I find it amazing that I could have done such a thing with the blessings of both Ballet BC and the Straight. Most important I used my secret weapon which was stylist Maureen Willick. I would like to point out that in one of the photographs you will note a framed photograph of a young man. The man is Vancouver poet Michael Turner whom I had photographed in that room a few months back for Quill and Quire. I had photographed him sitting on the bed with a woman behind him. The Quill and Quire editor called me to thank me for the fact that they had gotten hate mail because of my photograph and he was very happy!

Back in that century when we had good journalism, writers, illustrators & photographers could dream up ideas and quickly see them in print and sometimes as covers.

Michael Turner with Salem on the bed