Left & bottom Helleborus 'Honeymoon' - Right - Helleborus 'Wedding Crasher' - 22 March 2026

In 2018 I went to New York City with my Rosemary. Our hotel was very close to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We arrived when it opened. We were there to see the Michelangelo exhibit. After spending an hour there I asked Rosemary if she would be interested in seeing the David Hockney. We went to it. I then told her about the Rodin. We went to it. Expecting finally a “no” I asked her if she was interested in a exhibit of medieval armour. She went crazy taking photographs of the horse armour.

We left when the museum closed.

The next day it was the Frick, the Guggenheim and MOMA. I will never understand how dense I must have been to have been married (in 2018 it was 48 years) so long and never have known her keen interest in the arts.

Now five years after my Rosemary died today I found out my further dumb density of my brain. Rosemary’s hellebores were always “Rosemary’s hellebores”. Since her death I have come to love them with my scans of them and the obvious fact (I was dense about that) that hellebores are in bloom in February/March when nothing else is.

The scan here is of two hellebores that Rosemary planted together. Do you think that the names and the fact that they are close in the bed is an accident? Is it an example that my Rosemary had a keen sense of humour?

Yes. And the idiot I am.

P.S. Not being able to sleep tonight pass midnight 23 March 2026 I decided to go back to my scanner. You many note that the hellebores are wilting. I scanned them with a paper towel below. Why? On my origin scan the pink hellebore was blue. I was upset as I make sure my 22 year old CRT monitor is calibrated. I thought about it included the paper towel which is indeed white? Why is the pink hellebore blue? The flower reflects lots of UV in conjunction with the scanner light.

That's why! 

Sempervivum tectorum 20 March 2026

Hen and chicks (also known as hen-and-chickens, or hen-widdies in the southern United States) is a common name for a group of small succulent plants. They belong to the flowering plant family Crassulaceae, native to southern Europe and northern Africa. The plants grow close to the ground with leaves formed around each other in a rosette, and propagating by offsets. The "hen" is the main, or mother, plant, and the "chicks" are a flock of offspring,[1] which start as tiny buds on the main plant and soon sprout their own roots, taking up residence close to the mother plant.

Plants commonly referred to as "Hens and chicks" include ground-hugging species of Sempervivum (houseleeks) such as Sempervivum 'Pekinese', S. arachnoideum (cobweb houseleek), and S. tectorum (common houseleek), as well as members of the related genus Jovibarba. The name is also used for some species of Echeveria, Sedum and Bergenia although these plants differ significantly from Sempervivum and Jovibarba, and may require different cultivation and care. Wikipedia

Today in spite of the weather prediction it is a sunny day. I am not going in my bike. I may have a big excuse. My male cat Niño had his teeth cleaned Tuesday morning. They put him to sleep for this. So he has been barely able to walk. He refuses to eat or drink. I am taking him to the vet tomorrow for check-up. So I am cat sitting Niño mostly on my bed.

I did notice my pot of hens and chicks so I decided to scan one of the florets. The colours are happy colours. I can almost smile. Rosemary would have noticed them days before. She would approve of my scan.

Often in these blogs I quote my grandmother who told me that the devil knows more not because he is the devil but because he is an old man.

Back in that century and until my abuelita died in 1970 she was my mentor and I worshipped her. But now in this century anything old except is seen as suspect. Except perhaps antique cars, antiques and pristine but very old cameras that gearheads spend loads of money on. The relationship I had with my grandmother I do not have with my two granddaughters.

Since 2001 I have been scanning the plants of my garden. I call these over 3000 of them scanographs and I tell people I am a scanographer. When they look at my large framed ones and tell me how they like the photograph they immediately lose interest when I tell them that they are scanographs.

About five years ago I discovered the astounding possibilities of scanning (my Epson V700) two b+w negs, colour negs and slides together. The results are especially good when the chosen sandwiches (that’s what I call them) are from the same session.

Katheryn was one of the finest women I ever photographed for a span of several years. I have thousands of her pictures from the 16 sessions we had in my studio, UBC forest, West Van Lighthouse Park, Marble Arch Hotel Room 615, Wreck Beach and my bathtub. Today I decided to look at her pictures and I did these three sandwiches.

Because I am an old man of 83 I realize I don’t have too much time left to pursue these sandwiches.

Am I full?

It was in Malcolm Parry’s Vancouver Magazine office that I remember telling him sometime in 1977 that I was fascinated in taking photographs of nude women on Wreck Beach. In his wisdom, Parry just smiled. I wonder now that he is almost 90 what his opinion would be of my journey with female body photography has taken me to. Is there anything beyond today?

One of my first subjects was a delightfully lovely ecdysiast called Shelina. She posed for me at the beach and I even took those photographs with sea spray. Are they clichés?

Some many years later at an ecdysiast reunion at the Number 5 Orange Club, Shelina told me, “Alex, just for you I am now going to dance.” This she did and I will never forget how special I felt.

Then even more years later I contacted Shelina and she invited me to her home. By now she was plainly not going to take any of her clothes off. I took these photographs of her behind a semi-transparent door with the then available Polaroid film.

I like that transition from beginning to end. Is this the end of my efforts to photograph the nude female form? What would Malcolm Parry say?