In the 80s and the 90s some of my friends who were writers, illustrators, editors, designers, strippers, poets, etc. would meet for lunch every Thursday at Vancouver’s then fabulous Railway Club for lunch at noon. One very lively and pleasant young woman was Kimberly Klass. She seemed to be innocent and proved it with enthusiasm when she visited me one afternoon and I played her some of my favourite jazz. She had never heard it.
Somehow I got to photograph her many times. She was more than a muse as she made me (without saying anything) push the boundary of what I usually did. The photograph of her with her black skirt, stockings and hand is one of my most favourite ever.
One day she called me to tell me that she had a new friend who was a painter/artist. I immediately told her to bring him to my studio and for him to bring a little paintbrush.
At the end of the 20th century and in the beginning of this one there was a photographic gallery called The Exposure Gallery on Beatty Street. They kept having group shows with themes. A frequent one was The Erotic.
Somehow I managed to photograph two women, Kimberly was one of them in which I had a procedure which involved me pointing my camera at their faces while below they indulged in a self-induced orgasm. Then from the contact sheet I would pick five and run them in a long matted frame which I called a narrative. It was up to me to figure out (and as I was a man that was next to impossible) to find that third frame that marked the orgasm.
I will never understand women. At the opening about five of my women friends came up to me and asked, “Alex, why did you not ask me?”
This positive blog now goes in the opposite direction as some years ago Kimberly committed suicide. While we were friends she never ever told me about what might have led her to do that.
I am placing her beautiful photographs here in her memory.
Sursum corda.
