Ese Horizonte No Interrumpido de la Pampa Argentina
Friday, February 06, 2026
 | | Linda Lorenzo - el tero |
 | | El hornero |
 | | Avestruz |
Sólo dos veces en mi vida tuve la maravillosa
experiencia de ver el horizonte en 360° sin interrupciones.
A los 9 años en 1951 en Buenos Aires, mis padres me mandaron en
un verano a una estancia en La Pampa. Allí ya andaba a caballo y me gustaba ir
a esa llanura tan argentina para corretear a las avestruces. De vez en cuando
un ombú aparecía y rompía la monotonía (¿qué iba yo a saber?).
La segunda vez ocurrió en el buque ELMA Ría Aguapey en
el cual yo era el único pasajero en camino a la casa de mi mamá en Veracruz,
México. Había cumplido mis dos años en la conscripción obligatoria en la Marina
de Guerra Argentina.
Al estar en alta mar, pude ver ese horizonte del cual
Borges escribió unas poesías y ensayos.
Aquí en mi Vancouver las montañas esconden el
horizonte y sólo en las provincias centrales puede uno ver ese horizonte
mágico. En un viaje al norte de la Provincia de Saskatchewan para enseñar no vi
ese horizonte por las abundantes poblaciones.
Al ir a esa estancia me acuerdo que en el colectivo
que nos llevaba tocaban tangos antiguos. Vi una vacas con las bocas coloradas
como si sangraban. Mi mamá me dijo después que los estancieros habían tenido
una muy buena cosecha de frutillas y querían que subiera el precio si había escasez.
Ahora con mis 83 años me doy cuenta, con algo de
tristeza que no tengo ninguna foto pare ilustrar esta bitácora.
En mi acoso de las avestruces
me topaba con esos lindos teros. De vez en cuando cruzaba alguna estancia y en
los postes podía ver los nidos de barro de los horneros.
Tengo que advertir que sólo viví en la Argentina desde
el 1942 al 1952 y después casi tres años durante mi conscripción. ¡Como soy
algo tonto, hace unos 20 me di cuenta que para tener nostalgia hay que estar en
un lugar que no es el lugar de la nostalgia!
Para vivir esa nostalgia hace unos 20 años una amiga
argentina, Linda Lorenzo, aquí en Vancouver, me posó varios meses para vivir con
la fotografía nuestra nostalgia mutua.
La fotografié come un tero y un hornero.
Y no como una avestruz pero…
The Beauty of Uncertainty
Thursday, February 05, 2026
 | | Rosemary Elizabeth Healey Waterhouse-Hayward - Mexico City - 1969 |
 | | Werner Herzog - March 1996 - Vancouver |
Because I
have joined the 21st century, besides shooting with film cameras, I press the shutter on my two Fujis, an X-E1 and an X-E3. I am often asked what
the difference is between film and digital. I like to answer with one word –
uncertainty.
For photographs taken with film, before the film is
developed, we use that lovely word latent. The undeveloped picture is there
latently until it is brought out by processing.
In that last century, before we had that little screen
behind our cameras that we could look at immediately (and our sitter would ask
to see it), we had Polaroids. My Mamiya RB-67 had a Polaroid back. I often shot
a Polaroid before the “real” thing. Many times my subjects were difficult and
infamous. When that was the case I did not take my Polaroid back so they could
not ask me to see what I was doing. The Next Big Portrait - Bill Vander Zalm
Luckily I am no longer a magazine, newspaper or annual
report photographer so I need not worry of the conundrum of showing whoever
might now pose for me what my photos look like.
There is another kind of uncertainty that I am
enjoying in this century. I have been placing one negative (or slide) on top of
another similar one on my scanner. I call these scanner negative sandwiches.
When I do these there is that lovely momentary uncertainty on what the scan
will look like.
Here you have two. One sandwich is of my wife Rosemary
and the other of expert–on-everything Werner Herzog.
I like to tell my friends that I was born on August 31st,
1942 and that Herzog was born on the next day. I also enjoy telling them that
Keith Richards was born 18 December 1943. I like those two certain facts. And there is one more. In my files, Herzog's is right next to the one of Audrey Hepburn.
Rosemary's Hellebores & Camellia x williamsii 'Donation'
Wednesday, February 04, 2026
 | | Hellebores 4 February 2026 |
The hellebores ( I can only name three of them) are middle top, Helleborus 'Wedding Crasher', right, niddle yellow, Helleborus 'Wedding Crasher' and bottom right, Helleborus 'Honeymoon Blue'.  | | Camellia x williamsii 'Donation' - 4 February 2026 |
My garden
that until five years ago used to be our garden is a constant repository of
memories of Rosemary that I cannot escape and do not want to escape. If she is
not going to be around in bodily form, being with her memories in my head is a
distant second best.
Today it was
an overwhelming delight of flowers that when nothing blooms in February were
out in force. There were five of her hellebores and her most favourite camellia,
Camellia x williamsii ‘Donation. This camellia came from our old garden in
Kerrisdale.
Because I
was a sort of second-best kind of gardener it was Rosemary who insisted
something interesting should be noticed all year, even in cold winter months.
Hellebores
are not difficult to grow. You do not have to fuss over them as I might with my
old roses.
There is one
unfortunate fact. I have plant labels for only three of the five hellebores. At
one time I would have been most upset. Now I realize that just enjoying them
and having some to scan is all I need on a sunny Wednesday evening.
I feel good
today as I was able to go on my bike on my hour cycling to Jericho Beach. Then
I went to Safeway in that bike and purchased a very thick $35 steak and some
red peppers to barbecue. Even though I am an Argentine (and certainly not a
vegan) I rarely eat meat these days. It was a feast and I then cut up into
little pieces some of what was left and my Niño and Niña enjoyed them.
All in all a
fine day that I shared with my cats and with my memory of my Rosemary.
The Beauty of Randomness
Tuesday, February 03, 2026
 | | Mexico City - 1969 |
In this
century I have come to accept Artificial Intelligence even though I did write
this blog. Artificial Intelligence My Take
I adore AI
when it involves videos featuring cats. Then there is this. Today, like in past
weeks I have been going through my negative files involving my Rosemary when we
lived on Calle Herodoto in Mexico City in 1969. I have been placing here in my
blogs photographs that I took of her nude (but cropped to pass community
standards). Today I found more of these tight portraits I took of her. One
negative was next to another one that showed me taking my photograph in front
of a mirror with Rosemary behind me.
I like the
randomness of what shooting with film in the 20th century involved
when you were almost broke. You took every frame in those 36-exposure rolls of
b+w film. In 1969 I did not yet have a darkroom so I had the film processed at
a lab on Avenida Madero. Because of the expense few of these negatives where
ever printed as contact sheets or any of the pictures printed as photographs.
Only now in this century equipped with a good Epson scanner I can bring those
pictures to the “light of day”.
That brings
me to that other useful (when not fully trusted) feature of AI. I placed in
Google – light of day, origin of expression.
And of
course this is the first time I have seen these two negs enlarged. This means,
Borges style, that this is my first time seeing those photographs even though I
saw them through the viewfinder. From the negative edge I now know that I was
using Ilford HP5.
As for the
etymological origin of random: The word "random" originated in the
14th century from the Old French word "randon", meaning
"impetuosity, speed, or force". It stems from the Old French verb
randir ("to gallop"), which is rooted in Germanic terms for running
or flowing, such as rann. Originally, "at random" implied acting with
great speed or without control.
Rosemary without Mayonaisse
Monday, February 02, 2026
The Great Expectations of Judy Brown In 1964
while going to Mexico City College I feel for a short blonde called Judy Brown.
She was coldish but did pose for some photographs. In those days Agfa made a
very fast film called Isopan Record. I decided I would photograph her with the
light of match. It worked out well. The school year ended and I never saw Brown
again.
There is
something about photography that somehow it allows one (me) to relive past
moments of my life. I can scan Brown negatives (I have them to this day) and
write a couple of blogs showing the match photographs.
But even
better I can try the technique many years later and even modify the technique.
In the last few weeks I have been writing blogs that feature photographs that I
took of Rosemary in Mexico City in 1969. She was nude and I cropped for my
sense of family good taste.
I found (I
had forgotten) three shotsm where unlike Brown, she is holding a candle. Because
this century has the bonus of me being able to combine the technology of the
last century (the b+w negs I took of Rosemary)
with the technique of putting one negative on top of the other and then
scanning them with my Epson V700. I call these scanner negative sandwiches
without mayonnaise. The trick is to pick negs from the same session.
I believe
that I have done well with the scans here. But I cannot escape that feeling
when I look at the scans on my monitor that I am back to Mexico City 1969 in
our little apartment on Calle Herodoto. This is when Rosemary would serve me
fine meals and she had nothing on her plate. I was too stupid to realize that
we had little money so she was only splurging on me. And how would I have known that 57 years later I would be writing this blog and using those negatives. They are in perfect condition since I always overwashed my negatives for archival permanence.
Time at a Standstill With Brother Cyriac Haden C.S.C.
Sunday, February 01, 2026
 | | I February 2026 |
Linear Time
Reloj according to the RAE (Real Academia Española : Del
cat. ant. relotge, este del lat. horologĭum 'reloj de arena’, ‘reloj de sol’, ‘clepsidra', y este del gr. ὡρολόγιον hōrológion.
I have
written many times about my relationship with time. Here (above) is one of the blogs.
And I have also written in repeated time how Jorge Luís Borges wrote that all
first times are infinitely repeated as first times.
Today I thought
I might add a bit about time and me as I was looking at my watch. In Spanish
there are no two individual words watch and clock. Both are reloj (plural
relojes) and my wrist watch is a reloj de pulsera. My watch is a Timex (made in
the Philippines that I purchased for $50.00 at the Bay in 1986. Since then all
I have done to keep it going is to change the battery every two years. I never
take it off either when I swim or when I am in my hot tub bath.
The watch
today made me remember Brother Cyriac Haden, C.S.C. who taught me algebra and
chemistry in the late 50 at St. Edward’s High School in Austin. He had
discipline problems so we made his classes probably unhappy for him. In one of
his classes it was the one before lunch. I would stare at the large clock
behind him and it seemed that time stood still. Such was our treatment of him
that when I returned years later to a class reunion I went to the campus
Assumption Cemetery and apologized at his grave.  | | Brother Cyriac Haden, C.S.C. |
Now in this
century I wake up early to fed my two cats and to make my breakfast-in-bed on a
tray. I do stuff during the day (nothing important) and before I know it I am
turning off the light to sleep. I am wondering if I can change this or if I
want to change this speeding of time.
Brother
Cyriac might have some ideas.
|
