Rosemary Elizabeth Healey Waterhouse-Hayward - 1968 - Mexico City

 

It is easy to boast about being good at something. It is much better to acknowledge the influence of mentors, friends, pushy magazine art directors and studying other photographers and artists from the past.

And then there are other reasons why I think I am one of the best portrait photographers in Canada. One of them is in the photograph illustrating this blog.

I am not sure if I was yet married to my Rosemary or we were just married. I took this photograph in the apartment of a very good friend who lived on Calle Herodoto in Mexico City. He had a loft and to get to it there was a lovely wooden spiral staircase (I can still imagine its scent). Rosemary and I lived in that loft for a while (unmarried!). My friend, Raúl Guerrero Montemayor had taught me the Berlitz method of teaching English and had me teaching at a school where I was sent out to American companies that had Mexican executives that needed to learn English. It was in that school that I noticed Rosemary around December 15, 1967 and we were married February 8, 1968.

According to my negatives of this session, I used Ilford HP-5 film. I must have used a terrible developer as it is very grainy. For the photograph I used an Asahi Pentax S-3 with a 80mm Komura lens.

In this century there are so many words that are overused to the point that I avoid them like the plague. One of them is “iconic”.

This portrait of Rosemary, who through the years did wonderful stuff with the hair, has something soft, graceful, elegant and (yes!) feminine.

I soundly believe that If I am indeed a good portrait photographer is started with my facing my wife. My only regret is that while I have quite a few portraits of her, I should have taken many more