1959

I was 6 in a Buenos Aires kindergarten. In my class there were the then famous Diligenti quintuplets. Two were boys and three were girls. I distinctly remember being attracted to one of the girls and I often lifted her skirts.

I wonder what would happen in this century if a boy that age repeated my action. Would he be pilloried? He would probably be taken to a psychiatrist and or ejected from school.

When I was 8 and American girl, daughter of one of my mother’s friends came for a visit and asked me, “Do you want to see it?” I answered, “Yes,” and I did.

I was 9 when in the American school I was attending we read Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. It was then that I first experienced the concept of falling in love. I fell for Estella hard.

Because I was a nerd before the concept was invented, my relations with girls were subdued until I attended St. Edward’s High School in Austin Texas in 1958. It was in 1959, I was 17, that I became attracted to a short girl, called Judy Reyes who attended a Catholic school on the other side of Austin called St. Mary’s. She was a cheerleader. From my vantage point, playing the alto saxophone in the school band, we were right next to the cheerleaders during football games. I would wait for that most pleasant moment when Reyes would jump and I would see her white underwear. I felt no sense of guilt in wanting to do this.

I managed to dance a couple of times with her (I was a terrible dancer) and I remember that one of the songs was the theme song from the film A Summer Place. I even managed to go to a movie with her and even met her parents. After that she faded from my life as she had more aggressive boyfriends, one of them being my classmate Joe Davis.

About 6 years ago I located her. She was now living in San Antonio and she had a business selling cheer-leading equipment. The emails went back and forth until I mentioned the underwear. She told me she was born again and I never heard from her again.

A year after I married my Rosemary in 1968 I photographed her nude from the waist up. I was much too shy! Unlike Canadian men I posed her standing and not in a tub while pregnant. "Dear, let me take a picture of junior before he is born."

In this 21^st century, 4 years after my Rosemary died I am only interested in one woman. She is Rosemary. When I walk in my Kitsilano neighbourhood and I see a woman walking wearing a dress I often thank them for wearing one. They usually smile. I have a complete distaste for tight black yoga pants.

In my files I may have at least 60 women I photographed (many called me out of the blue and asked me for “different photographs”) wearing little or nothing. I soon found out and I now define pornography as something done in bad taste. I think my taste was impeccable.

In those TV red carpet events, I find the dresses worn by starlets, actresses and influencers as being in such bad taste that to me they are a new version of pornography that is worse than anything that I can readily find on my phone as videos.

With women now being on par with men (it was about time) why is it that men still dress conservatively?

I can only state here that what I saw as good taste and manners in the 20^th century is now gone.

Popular in Facebook is that revolving circular stage, with young women, that is an attraction in Germany. The stage, as it revolves shows you glimpses of underwear. I wonder where are this site’s awful “community standards”.

It was perhaps 10 years ago that I took a photograph in my studio in memory of Judy Reyes. I know that a print of it I cannot show it to anybody. Am I a fiend?

May 21, 1979

May 28, 2007

Thanks to my Rosemary I have no financial obligations or worries. I do feel isolated. Friends, family and people I worked with, either younger than my 82 years, or older are dying. Those that are alive have all kinds of terrible diseases. I am healthy even though my daily statins and baby aspirins cement the idea that one day soon that important valve in my chest will cease pumping blood.

Until then I have come to realize, in the last few weeks, that I live to write my daily blog, take photographs with my film and digital cameras, and garden now that spring has arrived. 

I have one obligation, a pleasant one, which is to wake up early in the morning and feed my cats Niño and Niña. Important, too, is, weather permitting, I walk with Niño around the block. I miss the presence of  Rosemary but my cats do their best to shower me with warmth and affection.

The above gives me a lot of time to think. I do read, but thinking is paramount now. I feel like a second-class pre-Socratic philosopher. This thought process takes me to my many memories and I associate them with one another.

A friend came for a visit some weeks ago & I showed him my Sting files. He said, “Your daughters must know you are cool as you have an autographed photograph that you took of Sting.” I am not sure of that.

My association with Sting takes me to the Denman Inn (no longer exists as either a hotel or a movie theatre) where Sting posed for me without his band members. As we left writer Les Wiseman said to me, “Imagine this, he said his band will be the next Beatles. He is fu….. crazy!”

From the memory of that picture, a few years later, I would go to the Number 5 Orange Street bar to see strippers. My favourite was Little Mary Arnold. Why? She danced to Message in a Bottle.

In the second scan here is a strange 45RPM record given to me by Sting that contains two versions of that song.

When I finally met Police guitarist Andy Summers we connected. He was and is a very good photographer. He was interested in my use of a Kodak film called Technical Pan which was the sharpest film ever made. I gave him a roll. 

The group shot of the Police I took at the Coliseum when I was obsessed in using a beautifully corrected 20mm wide angle lens. Should have I gotten closer?

Besides Message in a Bottle my other absolutely favourite Sting song is An Englishman in New York.

An Englishman in New York

While my father was born in Buenos Aires, his parents were from Manchester. To me he was a paragon of Englishness. He drank. I would accompany him on the bed and we would sing together My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean. In my neighbourhood I had two friends. One Miguelito was El Tano (Italian) Mario was El Alemán and I was El Inglesito (the English boy).

My mother taught me to smell behind the ears (this I did often with Rosemary when we were in bed). My mother told me I smelled like an Englishman.

During the Malvinas/Falklands war, because I am an Anglo Argentine I was undecided on my loyalty. In the end, because I had been a conscript in the Argentine Navy I rooted for the obvious underdogs.

While in the navy we were told that the lines in our sailor collar represented Nelson’s victories. When I donated blood to the British Hospital, knowing that Argentine Navy regulations said I could take the next day off I indulged in the hospital’s Thé Completo. This was tea with sandwiches and scones.

Our two daughters, Alexandra and Hilary were born in Tacubaya a Mexico City neighbourhood. Why? Because Rosemary gave birth to them at the British Hospital.

It took 52 years of marriage with Rosemary before she told me she did not like my famous (with other folks) English-style cucumber sandwiches.

It would seem that when meet my oblivion, seconds before, if I am compos menti, I will have to decide if my death will be an Argentine or and English one.

Rosemary Waterhouse-Hayward - Lisa Milroy - Bronwen Marsden - Cheri Partridge

Lisa del Giocondo is the real name of the Mona Lisa. Her husband was Francesco del Giocondo. In Latin-American countries we call her la Giconda.

In 1985, when Rosemary, our two daughters and I went to Paris, we saw the Mona Lisa with no hordes of people. But I was not allowed to use my camera.

In the early 60s when John F. Kennedy was president there was a cult of enthusiasts (me included) behind him. His fame did not diminish when he was assassinated. I remember reading a National Geographic that had an daring account about the Mona Lisa.

She was a member of a noble family, the Gherardinis. It seems that the family got into hot water and was exiled from Florence. A branch of the family settled in Ireland and adopted the name of Fitzgerald which means “son of Gerald”. The Geographic article brought up the subject that the Mona Lisa may have been related to Kennedy!

Since then I have had a recurring interest on the Mona Lisa. I first equated the famous painting to expressions of my Rosemary who had that slight smile (is it a smile?) that, somehow,  was tinged with sadness. Then I wrote three blogs where I described three beautiful women I photographed as Mona Lisas.

Lisa Milroy 

Cheri Partridge 

Bronwen Marsden 

A tribute to Rosemary

Those who might read or look at my blogs would know that rarely do any of my subjects ever smile. I believe that a smile hides a person’s soul.

Richard Chamberlain - April 1998

 

George Richard Chamberlain (March 31, 1934 – March 29, 2025) – Wikipedia

I don’t believe I am an ambulance chaser by writing about Richard Chamberlain on the day he died. I have written about Chamberlain twice.

Grasshopper Hill - Tchaikovsky & Richard Chamberlain

Richard Chamberlain & Diana the Huntress

I want to write about him today because at my age of 82 I have no idea when oblivion will take me away. As people (friends, relatives) older than I am or even younger die almost every day I cannot escape my fate with distractions.

I remember when I was teaching at a local arts/photography school called VanArts where I was not a happy camper. My students were allowed to eat in class and they had their laptops open during my lectures and they did the homework for other classes. One day when I mentioned that if they wanted to be photographers they might want to have a Plan B (plumbing) and a Plan C (electrician). I was fired soon after.

There was a Uk student called Strand who one day asked in class, “Mr. Hayward can you show us photographs of people that you have photographed that are still alive that appeared in magazines that still exist?”

My guess is that was the beginning of what is rampant now in social media – rudeness.

In the blog links above you will find out how a Chamberlain film directly affected Rosemary and me!

I am enclosing what in that last century we would call tear sheets. We would place them in our portfolio, proving to newspaper and magazine art directors that we were qualified editorial photographers. I am enclosing the tear sheet for two reasons. One is that I worked with a wonderful Globe arts reporter called Christopher Dafoe. And second that the folks at the Globe and Mail art department liked my filed edge border. Then it meant that I did not crop in my darkroom but in my camera. It assured those viewing that photograph that I had printed it as no two filed edge negative carriers were ever the same. It was like a finger print.

Rosemary with Camellia 'Donation' & Rosa 'Queen of Sweden' - 29 March 2025

The Grace—Myself—might not obtain – Emily Dickinson

707

The Grace—Myself—might not obtain—

Confer upon My flower—

Refracted but a Countenance—

For I—inhabit Her—

All these years since I began blogging in 2006 (6365 to date), I have found it rewarding to combine my photographs with poems by such poets as Emily Dickinson, Jorge Luís Borges, Julio Cortázar and many others. Without really being aware I have remembered many of these poems when I see them in my books. This is important to me as poetry was not my forte in high school. I could never memorize a poem for those extra points given. Now I remember lines from them.

In today’s blog, when I noted this Emily Dickinson poem in my excellent Twitter/X algorithm feed, I knew that it had a connection with my Rosemary. I spent a few minutes in bed this morning figuring out how to find or make an image that would go with the poem. This process is most satisfying and rewarding.

 The line “For I – inhabit Her – " to me means immediately that when I gaze at any flower in my (formerly ours) garden it is her face.

I previously wrote about it (see link below) where Argentine writer Ernesto Sábato manages in a lovely way to state that a van Gogh painting is van Gogh himself. 

van Gogh & Ernesto Sábato 

More Emily Dickinson blogs

In Ceaseless Rosemary

The Morns are meeker

A Favourite Just Noticed 

All the Witchcraft that we need 

It only gives our wish for blue 

My heart is laden 

Of bronze and blaze

The red and the white 

A Lady Red

Hands 

I took my power in my hands 

That clarifies the sight 

 Nature rarer uses yellow

Rosemary white and a bit of yellow 

Nature rarer uses yellow

Luck is not chance 

T is iris sir 

The white heat

I tried to be a rose 

nature rarer uses yellow 

The Tulip

Nor would I be a poet 

November left then clambered up
You cannot make remembrance grow
November
the maple wears a gayer scarf