Rosa 'Westerland' 14 November 2025

Since I began in the summer of 2001 I have amassed over 4000 (if not more) of my plant scans from my garden. Every time I do one I find myself amazed at its beauty and I have to quote in my mind what Borges said. For him, a first time kept being a first time.

Today was a cold grey and rainy day in which my only smile came from a 45 minute visit by Larry Campbell. Once he was gone I was back in my doldrums. Sometimes a melancholic moment produces a thought of “what if I?” After I scanned this-ever-so-lovely Rosa ‘Westerland’ which up until late summer is a brilliant orange, I printed a small version and included it with the scan (a second scan).

The whole operation reminds me of telling my grandmother that I was bored and she would suggest, "Alex, chúpate el codo." (Alex, suck your elbow). Because I was a little boy that kept me busy.

And so this operation has kept me occupied.

I first met Larry Campbell years ago when his job was working with stiffs as he was the City Coroner. He then became mayor and because we were friends he would promote my photography work including one which was a gallery showing in the concourse of the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. He left town and became a senator. He is now back with an important job in having to see if he can begin to solve the drug and homeless problem of the Downtown Eastside.

For some years now I tell people that I am obsolete, redundant, retired and inconsequential (soon to be a fine country and western song!).

Today I found out that is not quite the case. I contacted my friend former mayor, Sam Sullivan to see if he had Campbell’s contact email. He did!  I wrote and I received an instant reply. I told him that we should meet. He suggested tomorrow. I told him he could come to my house if he was not allergic to my two cats. He quickly replied with a photograph of his cat.

I will clean up my house in the morning and get my coffee beans out. I am in heaven!

One of the happy moments I would share with Rosemary by mid-November was getting two catalogues in the mail. One was the Lee Valley Christmas Catalogue. We would see what interesting stuff we could buy for our garden. The other was the Bits and Pieces  catalogue which had all kinds of items that we would get for our granddaughters (and have fun doing it) like good jig-saw puzzles.

Now I have no use for them. They have been on my kitchen centre table for a few days and I feel sad to throw them away. By keeping them perhaps those moments I share with Rosemary would come back. They will not but still I persist.

The cold, and dark rainy days that are with us I know will become cheerier with Christmas lights. But a family Christmas is not in the works. I have yet to figure out what I will do this Christmas. I might think of that ever so British expression to “chin up”.

But I do have a fine project for the beginning of December. I am going to Mexico City (the new nomenclature is CDMX) to photograph a photographer friend called Pedro Meyer who is 90. His marbles are intact but he told me that he is blind. I asked him if I would photograph him with eyes open, closed or in profile. He answered, “Alex tienes que hacerlo en las 3 maneras.”

Left - El Greco -Toledo - Right Toledo 1985

 More Photographs below this text.

My Rosemary had an adventurous spirit for travel. In 1985 we flew with our daughters to Paris and from there to Madrid. In Madrid after going to the Prado Museum we rented a car and drove all the way to Málaga. We stopped in many cities but our favourite was Toledo that reminded me a bit of Guanajuato in the State of Guanajuato in Mexico.

Because I had received a good arts education in my Catholic boarding school in Austin, Texas in the late 1950s I told my family that I want to go to the exact spot, if that was possible where El Greco painted his view of the city. We found it and I took  7 frames with Kodak Black and White Infrared Film and 6 with Ektachrome slides.

Last week in a frenzy of obsession I scanned several of the pictures. Some were very dark others were very light. Using the LAB darkness and lightness tool (it is very elaborate) in my 22 year-old Photoshop 8, I was able to inkjet print variations that are all excellent. I am unable these days to convince my photography peers the delight in combining my negatives and slides of that past century with a modern Epson scanner. It is the best of both worlds. The inkjet prints would have no rivalry from darkroom prints.

Molly Parker & Lynne Stopkevich - March 1997

Of late I have pleasantly noted that my Lillooet daughter Alexandra and my Burnaby daughter Hilary call each other every day. I call this sisterly bonding. It was only when I was 21 that I finally met a half-brother in Buenos Aires. The closest I have arrived at the concept of bonding was the very close relationship I had with my wife Rosemary. It all began when we were married in February 1968 and continued until she died in Dec 2020.

In 1978 when I had been doing photography work at Vancouver Magazine I was invited to a monthly reunion of contributors that was called a pissup. It was in one of them that I met a tall photographer with a radio voice called James La Bounty. When I asked him what kind of photography he did he answered, “I do conceptual portraiture.” I thought he was a pretentious SOB but I soon began to understand what he was talking about.

At first you faced an art director who gave you your assignment with some sort of explanation of what was to be done. This soon came with the questionable improvement of a fax. Then like magic I would receive faxed manuscripts of the articles I had to illustrate. It was then when I really began that interesting procedure of finding a concept for the job at hand.

With Globe and Mail reporter Christopher Dafow I saw a film called Kissed. After seeing it I had an idea for a concept. I had actress Molly Parker and director Lynne Stopkevich come to my studio. I wanted to convey their bonding.

When film director Lynne Stopkevich and actor Molly Parker walked into my studio on September 24, 2000 I had only one mission and that was to explain with one photograph my suspicion that a special bond existed between them. This bond had allowed them to make Kissed and the then yet-to-be released Suspicious River. Both films conveyed to me an almost alien point of view. I realized that this disturbing yet refreshing feeling was that both films were made with a woman’s point of view. I had been disappointed in the past by the films of American director Katheryn Bigelow as well as those by Nora Ephron. Molly Parker’s performance in Suspicious River is so astounding that I wanted to show in a photograph the invisible bond that must exist between the two women.

No matter what I tried I wasn’t getting anywhere. I told them to rest. At that point I saw them get really close. I told them to not move and I shot a Polaroid. I then shot it with film.

To me the result conveys that special bonding between women. The concept did not come from thought but from observing an instant. I wonder what James La Bounty would have done.

The photograph in the scan here was not the one that the Globe ran. I had a further concept wich involved going to Mountain View Cemetery as the film Kissed was about burying little animals and from there to a funereal human connection.