KImberly Klass - Lovely Innocence
Friday, March 06, 2026
In the 80s and the 90s some of my friends who were
writers, illustrators, editors, designers, strippers, poets, etc. would meet
for lunch every Thursday at Vancouver’s then fabulous Railway Club for lunch at
noon. One very lively and pleasant young woman was Kimberly Klass. She seemed
to be innocent and proved it with enthusiasm when she visited me one afternoon
and I played her some of my favourite jazz. She had never heard it.
Somehow I got to photograph her many times. She was
more than a muse as she made me (without saying anything) push the boundary of
what I usually did. The photograph of her with her black skirt, stockings and
hand is one of my most favourite ever.
One day she called me to tell me that she had a new
friend who was a painter/artist. I immediately told her to bring him to my
studio and for him to bring a little paintbrush.
At the end of the 20th century and in the beginning
of this one there was a photographic gallery called The Exposure Gallery on
Beatty Street. They kept having group shows with themes. A frequent one was The
Erotic.
Somehow I managed to photograph two women, Kimberly
was one of them in which I had a procedure which involved me pointing my camera
at their faces while below they indulged in a self-induced orgasm. Then from
the contact sheet I would pick five and run them in a long matted frame which I
called a narrative. It was up to me to figure out (and as I was a man that was
next to impossible) to find that third frame that marked the orgasm.
I will never understand women. At the opening about
five of my women friends came up to me and asked, “Alex, why did you not ask
me?”
This positive blog now goes in the opposite direction
as some years ago Kimberly committed suicide. While we were friends she never
ever told me about what might have led her to do that.
I am placing her beautiful photographs here in her
memory.
Sursum corda.
The Cosmic Lottery
My friend
Ian McGuffie constantly tells me that we won the cosmic lottery because we were
born in that last century.
Not too long
ago I was fired from a photography school in Vancouver as I told my students
that if they wanted to be photographers they should have a Plan B (plumbing)
and a Plan C (electricity). Because I am an old man I am trying to throw stuff.
Today I found an envelopes with these promo post card sized cards. The date is
2006. By then the writing was on the wall as magazines and newspapers began to
fade and the concept of accepting photographs provided to them started the end
of assigned jobs.
I had these
card printed very well by Metropolitan Design Printers and my photographs were
drum-scanned by Grant Simmons/DISC. These were my last ever hard copy promotion
that began many years before with all sorts of portfolios including some that
were called tear-sheet. All of these portfolios are, one on top of another in
my oficina. I cannot make myself throw them away.
Back in that
cosmic lottery I made yearly trip to Toronto to show those portfolios to
magazine are directors.
Of these
four promo cards I can state that they all now involve some bad news. Arthur
Erickson is dead, the lovely model Lisa married a plastic surgeon in LA and he
ruined her body. As for my two granddaughters (28 and 22) this century has
eliminated the importance of grandparents. I am an old man.
A Late Christmas Surprise
Thursday, March 05, 2026
 | | 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.
Swatting Photographic Flies
Wednesday, March 04, 2026
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.”
Rosemary's Flowers Galore
 | | 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.
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