Colleen Hughes

Borges writes often that every first time, when repeated, will still be the first time. I am not all that sure I agree.

In that last century, especially in the 80s and early 90s, I photographed many beautiful ecdysiasts that showed patience with my amateur bungling. It was thanks to their patience that I eventually became better. One of those patient muses was Colleen Hughes. She even posed for me in Lighthouse Park.

But today I decided to look into her files again after my social media Facebook showed me a blog I had written about her some years ago. It is this one. Perfection Deferred

When I looked at the files it hit me like a bolt that some of these photographs are good for one reason. I did not use my neutral and boring studio. I photographed her in her home where she was comfortable, could change clothes but best of all the existing light (no flash) and the window light came through.

No at my age of 83 I do not see myself taking pictures like this again. I don’t know young women and the women I know do not feel comfortable showing their age.

I might just correct Borges and point out that every first time repeated, provides cumulative improvement that comes with experience.

And Below more of Colleen Hughes blogs:

El Pelo de Una Mujer 

Maddonas and Children 

My Portable Memory 

A Spectrum of Red Delight 

That Chandler Blonde 

My Helga 

Lighthouse Park 

Colleen in tub 

Sometimes what I find I never knew I had lost. I have even forgotten why suddenly one frame of a colour negative has appeared on my office floor. Because in the upper left it has a street numbering sign with the letter a as in “1560 a 1565”, my guess is that it is either in Spain or in Mexico.

I rarely take street photographs particularly in Vancouver where I live. I am sure that if I photographed an articulated B-Line Bus on Broadway and gave the result to one of my daughters or granddaughters they could make money with it in 30 years.

Often I write that with the loss of neon signs and the taking over of tall condos with gray, blue or green tinted windows in Vancouver, Fred Herzog would not be inspired to shoot anything here.

At the same time I know that if I boarded a plane to Mexico City, once there, I would be take street photographs. It would seem that just like nostalgia is for a place not where you live, the same applies to street photographs.

If I were Borges I could weave a story about the three old women in my photograph. All I can say is that my obsession with association makes me think of the Scottish pipe tobacco I used to smoke. It was called Three Nuns and it was advertised as “None Nicer”.

Perhaps my Rosemary with her better memory might have remembered. Now I find it almost uninspiring to think that I could take street photographs anywhere without her as company.

Hydrangea 'Quercifolia' 17 October 2025

Gardeners, and I am one, like to apply the word noble to plants that are easy to grow and perform without fuss. It is especially so in the use of the word noble (pronounced naw-bleh) in Spanish. If you have a good friend that comes to your help “es un amigo noble”.

Rosemary and I had 37 varieties, including species, of hydrangea in our large Kerrisdale garden. When we moved to Kits I picked only three. One of them is Hydrangea 'Quercifolia' (quercus is the botanical name for the oak tree). This hydrangea grows wild in the state of Georgia.

All the very large inflorescences are now brown but there are two or three that are small and white like in spring. This hydrangea and some odd confused rose might make the last of my plant scans for the year.

In Spanish the common name for a hydrangea is hortensia. This lovely sounding name was a popular name for women in the past century. Hortus is Latin for garden.

Buenos Aires - 31 August 1950

"We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space,time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life." Harold Bloom - How To Read and Why (2000)

That above statement is now constantly in my thoughts.

Because my Manila grandmother lived with my mother most of my life and she died in 1970 I was very attached to my abuelita. In my present house besides having her photographs I have some of her personal stuff including a silver drinking cup when she was a little girl in school.

The Living or the Dead 

I agonize what to do with her possessions as I am not sure that my daughters or granddaughters would value them. I wrote a blog about it (link above) and sent it to a first cousin in Buenos Aires who shared our grandmother. He answered coldly without asking me about the possessions and told me that if nobody wanted them just to throw them away.

Whenever I call anybody I know I am met by a universally provided Telus answer. Generally I just hang up. I remember many years ago that one of the members of the CBC Vancouver Radio Orchestra had a hilarious answering machine message. It was funny and not clinically cold.

Perhaps my anguish on this coldness has to do that I lived for many years in Mexico where there is a lot of affectionate human contact universally known as “the abrazo”.

As the days get shorter and I must now wear long-sleeved flannel shirts I am not looking forward to my hermetic life with my two cats.

To illustrate this blog my Uncle Tony (my mother's broother) took the photograph at my 8th birthday in our home in the Buenos Aires barrio Coghlan. How was I to know then that all  those smiles one day would be wiped  by death or Bloom's imperfect sympathies.

The boy on the left in shadow was my friend Mario Hertzberg. He lived across the street. One day when I visited him I spotted a framed photograph of him. I inquired. He told me it was not him but of his brother who had died in a concentration camp in Germany because he was Jewish. It was my first awareness that the world was not just full of smiles. It was that same year, 1950, when my mother as she was combing my hair said, "Alex your fleco (bangs) on your head makes you look like Hitler. That was the first time I heard that name.

At about that time he and I were walking one day to the train station and we were stopped by a Capuchin monk. He greeted us and asked us if we believed in God. We were affirmative but I pointed out that Mario was Jewish. With a big smile the monk said, "That makes no difference since we all believe in the same God."

Take that 21st century! 

I'm in the centre, bottom row, and my father top left. 

Melissa Oei

Last night I went to the opening of Carmen Rodriguez’s Fire Never Dies: The Tina Modotti Project. I was sitting next to a man with a lovely smile. He looked familiar but at my advanced age of 83 I had to ask him. Kevin Kerr, he was and I immediately made his connection with the Electric Company Theatre.

Kevin Kerr uncharacteristically not smiling

There was a ghost sitting not far from me. She was Vicki Gabareau whom I had photographed sitting at the Cultch Theatre many years ago when she had returned to her Vancouver home town.

Vicki Gabareau

A third ghost was sitting next to me. She was my Rosemary, who died five years ago and accompanied to most of the shows at the Cultch and the York.

Nor far was my Chilean friend Carmen Aguirre and costume designer Carmen Alatorre. I almost felt at home.

Why almost? In years back I was an amateur music, dance and theatre critic with my blog. After a performance I would go straight home, download my photographs and write. This time around, there was the relief that I did not have to anything and just go home.

It was not to be, because I noticed in the credits: Choreography: James Gnam. I never did photograph him (I did his brother Connor Gnam) but I saw him as a stellar performer many times.

Looking at Kevin Kerr it immediately came to me that many years ago an Electric Company Theatre had staged a production that involved choreography by Crystal Pite in which even the opening and closing of the theatre curtains was choreographed. I wrote about that here.

Studies in Motion with Crystal Pite 

Watching all the performers dance and move, and especially Melisa Oei as Sagradz Corazon  (lovely costume on her by Carmen Alatorre, as you can never go wrong with fishnets) it seemed that every movement, not only the dances were choreographed.

Because theatre can be choreographed I also know that dance can be theatre. The proof I saw in August  2023 when Béatrice Larrivée & Noa Lee Ashkenazi in a performance at the Arts Umbrella Dance Company’s theatre dancing the method Gaga (Batsheva Dance Company) was how their facial expressions and their movements when they were close to each other was all acting, all theatre.

Béatrice Larrivée 

I will leave others to write about Carmen Aguirre’s fine play. For me I was moved by all that movement. But I must thank Aguirre for having Tina Modotti and Sagradx Corazon dance to some spectacular Ástor Piazzolla.