23 August 2025

In the late 70s and 80s in Vancouver I photographically covered the active punk and ecdysiast era.

On Saturday I went to a reunion of the latter at the Admiral Hotel on Hastings in Burnaby. When I left a thought came to me that is now firmly in my head and has given me a positive view in a world that is not.

To be an artist in Vancouver can be tough. Many artists fail and they become bitter.

As a little boy when my mother was about to spank me my grandmother would tell her, “Nena don’t spank Alex, he is an artist like me.” But it was only around 2005 that my Argentine artist friend Juan Manuel Sánchez told me that I was an artist and I began to suspect that I was.

My definition of an artist is that of someone who is compelled to do something and ignores either being ignored or criticized. I try to print my photographs and scanographs every day. I write a blog every day (6583 to date). I do both of those activities in almost complete isolation. When I work at my computer my male cat Niño sits on a chair next to me.

On Saturday I witnessed women (I had photographed most of them at one time). I noticed their warmth and enthusiasm for life. It was then that I realized that they had all been artists who were compelled to dance. Each one of them had a personal style and danced to a most personal choice of music.

Yes, those Vancouver ecdysiasts of the 80s were artists!

And adding to that, in recent concerts by Art Bergmann and Burnaby councellor Joe Keithley (A.K.A.  Joey Shithead), both men stuck to their punk ideals they had in the late 70s to protest man’s inhumanity to man.

And thanks to those punks and ecdysiasts I feel honoured now to say I am an artist.