Euphorbia pulcherrima - 5 March 2026

In what is a yearly tradition, my friend Tim Turner who is a real estate agent who sold our Kerrisdale house and found our home in Kitsilano, brings me a large poinsettia every year. It is now in its last legs. As I was about to take it to the green bin I noticed the leaves. Noticing small stuff is something I learned from my Rosemary. In our garden my large hostas competed with some of her tiny perennials.

Because I cannot escape connecting everything in my house to my memory of Rosemary I decided to scan these lovely leaves. She would have smiled at my effort.

Quite often in these blogs I quote my grandmother who would often tell me that when the devil was bored he swatted flies with his tail.

It is next to impossible for me to explain that taking care of two cats, performing the household menialities and having no obligations produces enajenamiento. This Spanish word sounds a lot better to me than the English equivalent existential angst.

I have no financial worries, I am more or less healthy and every day when I am not thinking of my dear departed Rosemary It seems I am just waiting for something to happen. What that is is most obvious.

And so I sit at my chair by my computer and swat photographic flies with my computer and film files.

Two days ago I wrote here about my Ektachromes with Lisa who now lives in Seattle. The pictures I looked at today I shot in 1986. I am again most interested in these photographs as I did not light them. In fact a cliché of clichés is that I photographed her with reflections on her body from her curtain blinds. I often think that clichés are indeed that simply because the work.

Ektachrome Blues 

Today my fly swatting involved putting one negative on top of the other on my scanner. I call these scanner negative sandwiches.

I remember some years ago that I had a chat with a beautiful woman in a café and I asked her if she would pose for me. She said, “I don’t do boudoir.” I was insulted as I believe that my photographs, and particularly these are not that.

Now at my age of 83 I would no longer pursue taking photographs like these. The photographs I took in 1986 of Lisa showed lots of nipples. I would never place them here.

Now when I think of my Rosemary, while bed rotting with my two cats, I do not think of sex or anything erotic. I think of getting close to her and smelling her behind her ear and enjoying the warmth of her body.

Bed rotting this morning with Niña on top of me I looked at Rosemary’s framed photograph on the wall and thought, “The three of us are together.”

Camellia sasanqua 'Yuletide' & Camellia x williamsii 'Donation' 4 March 2026

 

Today, 4 March 2026, the sun came out, sort of, that, and Rosemary’s open flowers cheered me up. I decided to scan the plants by their categories and not together. 

Crocus vernus 'King of the Striped'

 

The scan of the two camellias, one in huge glory and the other very small made me really think of Rosemary. That little Camellia sasanqua ‘Yuletide’ always bloomed at Christmas. This year it did not and it started blooming at the end of February. This particular scan of an uncharacteristically small size I adored as it reminded me how in 52 years with Rosemary I never got to know her completely. Every day there was some new surprise in store for me.

Left - Helleborus x niger 'Honeyhill Joy', top Helleborus 'Wedding Crasher' & the third unknown

Rosemary might have remembered the name of the hellebore for which I found no metal ID. These ID tend to either fade or simply get lost. At one time I would have been upset. Now I don't care if I cannot remember the names. In our former large Kerrisdale garden during that garden craze in the 90s and first 10 years of this century serious gardeners came so we had to make sure all the plants were identified. In this complex world some stuff is going in the opposite direction. 

 Because my mother, grandmother, my Rosemary and I were teachers at my now ripe age of 83 I feel that I have amassed a lot of relevant information that I would like to pass on before I meet my oblivion. I do not think this is going to happen as the concept of respecting old people (and grandparents) was something that happened in that distant 20^th century

Quite a few years ago at a café I spotted an apparition of woman sitting alone. Because it was in that last century, she did smile at me when I told her that I wanted to photograph her. This I did for many years. Such was her patience that I tried many photographic methods. Some failed.

Now, because I can, with all my idle time, I decided to look at her thick files. I spotted something that I tried with her twice. This was to photograph her in her home with pushed (400ISO) to 800ISO) Ektachrome. I used no lights .Her bedroom was awfully dark. Because of the speed of the film I was able to shoot loose without a tripod.

Now in March, 2026 I want to let go of my studio lights, and go back to this kind of photography.

In her files (she was an ecdysiast) I found some photography-lab proofs with writing on the correct settings to make good prints which I gave to Lisa which was her name.

I have scanned these Ektachromes and with my 22 year-old Photoshop 8 I have been able to coax out shadow detail that would have been impossible in that photo lab in the 20^th century.

Ektachrome is still being made. Not the fast stuff but I will be able to push the 100ISO to 200ISO and with my film camera on a tripod I will see if I can get some similar results. Ektachrome always enhanced (criticized in its time) the blues. I like them.

I

Life photographer Philippe Halsman was once told to photograph open heart surgery. Like all good photographers he did his research and was allowed to witness one. When he saw the blood he fainted. The surgeon asked him how he planned to take photographs if he saw blood again. Halsman answered, “I will be behind my camera.”

Quite a few years ago the wife of one of the singers of the Vancouver Punk band No Fun told me that she was going for hip replacement surgery. She wanted me to photograph her in the nude in my studio before the operation and nude again once it had been replaced. I have no idea how she got the permission but she told me that I would be able to photograph the operation. This I did and I can attest here that I saw a lot of blood. Somehow I did not faint and I used one camera with colour film and another with b+w.

There is something about having been a photographer in that last century. I had access to lots of stuff that would have been prohibited to most people.

It was in Acapulco for something like that,where on assignment for Vancouver Magazine, I was supposed to photograph the chief of the city’s federal police. I was warned by the chief (we had been neighbours year before in Mexico City) that he was going to show me everything, but that I had to be careful as he could lose his job.

I witnessed a suspect being tortured by the shaking of a bottle of pop with chilli up his nose. One day one of his plainclothes men came into his office. Felipe (the chief) opened a drawer and gave him a .22 revolver. The next day the plainclothes man returned with the gun. I asked Felipe what this was all about. He said, “Alejandro yesterday we had a cop killer. Today we don’t anymore.”

Living now in my Kitsilano pad (when was the last time anybody used that word?) with my two cats, I welcome the safe boredom of not having to do anything.

I must point out that once, when they when a dentist in Mexico City used a miniature jackhammer to remove a tooth of mine and blood flowed, I fainted. The dentist and Rosemary picked me up from the floor.

When I go for a blood test, I turn around not to look. I fainted once.

It is interesting that “sangrón” in Mexico is a lame insult for an idiot. I may be one of those.

Retiro Train Station photographed with a panoramic Widelux

Buenos Aires was my home from 1942 (when I was born) until 1952 when my grandmother, my mother and I moved to Mexico City. I returned to Buenos Aires in 1965 to serve as a conscript in the Argentine Navy. In spite of such few years in my Native Argentina (I am now 83) my life there was ruled by trains and subways, mostly built by the English. My neighbourhood of Coghlan (we were 7 blocks from the station of that name) was named after an English railway engineer. 

My friend poet Rubén Derlis at the Coghlan train station

In my quite a few trips back to Buenos Aires in this century I can attest at the efficiency of the system. The main downtown train stations (replicas of the large ones in London) of Retiro an Constitución have connections within them to the most efficient subway system called “el subte”

During my stint in the Argentine Navy because of the usefulness of my English I was placed in the office of the US Naval Advisory Group. Because of my lofty job as translator I was allowed to live in a pension and I did not have to be in a military barracks where I would have been at the mercy of nasty corporals.

Retiro

This meant that I went daily to my office in the train line called Bartolomé Mitre. My train stopped in Coghlan and then it stopped in two more stations before I arrived in the huge Retiro Station. From there I took the subte and I only had to walk a couple of blocks to my office which was next to Navy Secretary. As a penniless conscript (our military pay was one dollar a month (they had not modified the payment since 1902, I did not have to pay the train or the subte. Sometimes the guarda (the ticket guy would demand my ticket) and I would get off and take another train.

Retiro

Now at my ripe old age I have been thinking how that train defines my present life. I get on my train as if I were a boy. In the next two stations people get off and by the time I arrive at Retiro I am the only passenger on the train. This idea reflects that most of my contemporaries and family are all dead. I get off in Retiro and there my dream idea stops.

Lavalle Subte station - Photograph by Rosemary

Of late I have found another way of looking at it. I get off the empty train at Retiro. But that empty train boards new passengers, all alive, to the trip back to Coghlan and beyond. Is my entry into Retiro signify that I am dead?

I cannot finish here how once in that train when I was in the navy I had my sailor cap under my arm. I thought it was polite to take it off in the train. A well-dressed man came up to me and said, “Conscript put on your cap.” I answered, “I don’t want to.” The gentleman then pulled an ID that said he was a general and a member of SIDE (Servicio de Inteligencia del Estado). He demanded my name and conscript identification number. When I got to my office a friendly Argentine Marine Corps corporal asked me. “Alex what have you done? An arrest order has arrived and you are going to the clink after work every day for a week.” When I finally finished that arrest I can attest here that I was full of lice.