Early On
Wednesday, April 02, 2025
 | 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 21st 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 20th 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?
An Englishman in Buenos Aires
Tuesday, April 01, 2025
 | 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.
La Mona Lisa & Four Giocondas More
Monday, March 31, 2025
 | 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.
On the Edge (filed) & Richard Chamberlain
Sunday, March 30, 2025
 | 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.
For I - inhabit Her-
Saturday, March 29, 2025
 | 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
A melancholy of a waning summer
Just as green and as white
It's full as opera
I cannot dance upon my Toes
a door just opened on the street
Amber slips away
Sleep
When August burning low
Pink Small and punctual
A slash of blue
I cannot dance upon my toes
Ah little rose
For hold them, blue to blue
|