Rosa 'William Lobb' & Hosta 'Whee!' 2 May 2024

 

Until the end of the 20th century I believe that artists, to be artists had to get their hands dirty.

In 2001 on lark based on a tad of summer boredom I scanned my first plant, a Bourbon rose, Rosa ‘Reine Victoria’. Because I had beginner’s luck I kept at it. I saw that my mission was one of botanical accuracy so I scanned my plants at 100% size, I made sure the colours were accurate and when I saved these large files I made sure I had the day’s date attached.

Little by little, while I kept scanning with accuracy, I found myself spending more time arranging my plants on the scanner. Eventually I realized that I was going more for beauty than for accuracy.

When I was in kindergarten I won a first prize in my class with a water colour that looked pretty abstract. In 1954, while in Mexico City, my mother had me learn to paint and draw with an English artist called Robin Bond. I was not too bad. One day I told my mother that I could no longer paint. A couple of years later I bought my first SLR camera in Austin.

It was in 1962, that on a trip with an art class from Mexico City College to Guanajuato (I was invited but I was studying engineering), that the photographs I took, won me a first prize in a college art competition. My award was signed by Rufino Tamayo.

I never considered myself an artist. Once we moved to Vancouver in 1975, by the time I became a competent magazine photographer specializing in portraits, I was quick to deny to anybody that asked that I was an artist. So many would-be artists, who did not make or do not make it in this city, become bitter. I wanted to avoid that bitterness.

It was my Argentine artist friend Juan Manuel Sánchez who was a member of the prestigious Grupo Espartaco, which was made up of many artists who fought the Argentine military dictatorship of the mid 70s who declared, “Alex sos un artista.”  It was only then that I began to believe that perhaps I was. At that time I was printing my photographs in my darkroom. Thus I could declare I was a true artist.  I got my hands dirty.

But what is it that I am now that I scan my plants from my garden in my well lit and clean oficina? Can my plant scans be art? Am I an artist?

Luckily when people tell me they like my plant photographs and I correct them and tell them that they are scanographs and that I am a scanogrpher, they turn around and lose interest. And, most important, I don’t become bitter. Why?

I have always been inspired by American photographer Garry Winogrand (January 14, 1928 – March 19, 1984). When he died they found hundreds of unprocessed rolls of film in his house. Winogrand famously said that the liked to photograph things to find out what things looked like photographed.

I have borrowed that mantra as when I scan my plants and I spend a bit of time arranging them “artistically” I never really know what my scans will look like. 

Today I scanned together (twice) the moss rose Rosa ‘William Lobb’ with a hosta the I believe may be the only plant with botanical nomenclature in its name that includes a !. It is Hosta  'Whee!’

 The two scans today did surprise me. Winogrand would have understood.