Portia Winters at The 5 dressing room

Susan Sontag wrote a book in 1972 that was titled On Women. She died soon after so her book was published posthumously. When I read it last year I realized that a woman’s situation now is not much different than it was in 1972. Sontag, in a nutshell wrote (not her opinion) – Old men have character, old women are ugly.

It is obvious in social media that sexist idiots will post two photographs, one of a young girl (do you know who she is? Years later, she won two Oscars.) and then of that same woman now 80. Rarely have I seen such a thing with male actors like Gregory Peck.

My favourite actress of all time was Rear Window’s  (1954) Grace Kelly (I fell I love with her particularly when I saw her almost final film The Swan. She married that man from Monaco shortly after. But luckily she died while still young so I will never have to look at her old face in social media and gasp.

In the late 70s and 80s I photographed 40 ecdysiasts (look up the word). In most they wore next to nothing or nothing. In 1980 I was 38 years old and I was mildly (?) obsessed with conveying eroticism. At the time I admired Helmut Newton. In my pursuit I often asked these ecdysiasts and others that posed for me what as women they considered erotic. On woman finally did give me an answer, “Yielding flesh.”

Now looking back at all those photographs with my new consideration of what a woman is (inspired for many years by my Rosemary) there is this one illustrating this blog that stands out. Her name was Portia Winters. I was allowed to take photographs inside the Number 5 Orange (The 5 for those who were hip) because I was shooting for an article in the Vancouver business magazine Equity. A writer convinced the then editor Harvey Southam that the article would be about the business side of the industry and it was ultimately called Sex Sells.

I took pictures in that dressing room and Winters never acknowledged my presence. For a while there was a youngish man present who did the hair of the dancers that were there. That was his business.

In 1962 and 1963 I was studing at a college in Mexico City called Mexico City College. I took philosophy for two years because the instructor was a fantastic philosopher from Barcelona called Ramón Xirau. Because of him I became a follower of Plato’s philosophy (that makes me a Platonist). His world was a perfect world of ideas (essences) and a poor copy that was the world of humans. He illustrated this in his allegory of the cave. In a long tunnel, at the end some men were chained to a stone bench and all they saw were reflections on the wall in front of them. Behind them there was a fire that degenerated the reflection that came from the end of the tunnel that was the world outside.

For me this photograph of Winters, she is sure of herself. She knows what and who she is. In short, she is the essence of a woman.

Portia Winters

Rosa 'Double Delight' 19 August 2026

 

Some roses when they bloom make me smile. Rosa ‘Double Delight ‘ is one of them.

Rosa 'Double Delight', (aka ANDeli), is a red blend hybrid tea rose cultivar bred in the United States by Swim & Ellis and introduced in 1977. Its parents were two hybrid tea cultivars, the red and yellow 'Granada' (Lindquist, 1963) and the ivory 'Garden Party' (Swim, 1959)

We originally had this rose in our Kerrisdale garden in the last century. When we moved to our Kitsilano home nine years ago it did not survive the transfer. Last year I found it in a nursery and instantly bought it.

I am sad that Rosemary never got to see it. Like me she would have smiled and instantly put her nose to these two blooms. The rose is most fragrant.

Because I am going to be 84 soon I am finding little interest in buying new roses to replace some that have died. Some of Rosemary’s perennials are still around. I take care of my garden but I am slowly letting it go. I am sure that it will survive and one of the four women in my family might just resurrect it.

Her side

I am deeply affected by that line of Captain Beefheart’s song Ashtray Heart – someone’s had too much to think.

In my constant grief of my Rosemary’s death on 9 December 2020 I realize that it was 6 years ago. I am going to be 84 at the end of this month. In six more years I doubt I will be around. People in their youth never understand that with age time becomes compressed.

And so lying on the bed a few days ago I thought of this. It involves beds.

In 1972 my mother died in bed in our Mexico City home in the presence of Rosemary and me. We heard her breathe in and then there was nothing. We could not find a doctor in the neighbourhood so a nearby veterinarian signed a provisional death certificate and told us what we knew, “Está muertita tu mama.”

In 1975 we sold our house for good money. We were to move to Vancouver. Rosemary decided to send all we owned (including salt, pepper and oil) by a moving van.

When we arrived we rented a little house in Burnaby.  One of the mattresses we had was a double. It never occurred to me then that it was the one were my mother had died.

When we moved from Kerrisdale to Kitsilano, Rosemary wanted a bed with a headboard. We bought a very nice king-size one.

It was in that bed that Rosemary died. Six minutes before she did she asked, “Am I dying?” I was unable to answer.

On 12 May when I woke up, as usual my two cats, Niño and Niña were there, too. I touched Niño and he did not respond. When I looked at him his eyes did not focus. He may have died at the most an hour before because rigor mortis had not set in.

Now when I lie on the bed with Niña on my side, I wonder if she knows or understands. She was Rosemary’s cat. She stroked her on that bed.

She is 15. Who will go first and will this bed be one where it will happen?                                

Top left Rosa 'Darcey Bussell' - right Rosa 'Emily Carr' & below Rosa 'Gabriel Oak' 17 August 2026

One of my favourite Jorge Luís Borges poems is one called La lluvia (The Rain) I will not put a translation here as one of the lines – una flor llamada rosa – y el curioso color del colorado cannot be translated.

Una de mis favoritas poesías de Jorge Luís Borges es la lluvia. Tiene una línea sobre la rosa que es imposible traducir al inglés.

Bruscamente la tarde se ha aclarado

Porque ya cae la lluvia minuciosa.

Cae o cayó. La lluvia es una cosa

Que sin duda sucede en el pasado.

Quien la oye caer ha recobrado

El tiempo en que la suerte venturosa

Le reveló una flor llamada rosa

Y el curioso color del colorado.

Esta lluvia que ciega los cristales

Alegrará en perdidos arrabales

Las negras uvas de una parra en cierto

Patio que ya no existe. La mojada

Tarde me trae la voz, la voz deseada,

De mi padre que vuelve y que no ha muerto.

Today I saw 3 red roses in Bloom so I decided it was worth repeating that poem. It is one that has appearead in many of my blogs. Rosa 'Gabriel Oak' bloomed earlier than the other two and with the bright sun it lost its intense red.

Hoy al ver estas tres rosas colorada floreciendo en mi jardín vi la oportunidad de escribir esta bitácora sobre el tema de la rosa colorada. La Rosa 'Gabriel Oak' florecío ántes que las otras y con el sol perdió su intenso colorado.

Topaz (Miss Mew to me)

In a few days, I will be going to an ecdysiast (look it up) reunion that will probably be the last one. It will be attended by women who were in the industry in the late 70s and early 80s. As far as I can tell I am one of four men who are invited.

Reunion - August 2025 - Little Mary Arnold in centre

I went to the reunion last year and I took a group photograph of all the participants. I was thanked for having rustled up an ailing Little Mary Arnold. She died earlier this year.

When my Rosemary, our two daughters and I arrived in Vancouver from Mexico City in 1975 my desire to become a photographer was delayed. My first real job was at the French and English CBC. It was in the latter where one of the dancers in the massive variety shows was part of Jim Hibbard’s dance group. Her name was Jackie Colman. She was fantastic. From there she started dancing at the Number 5 club and coincidentally Hibbard was the DJ.

Littlle Mary Arnold

I have many memories of my long involvement with these dancers and how, thanks to their patience, I became a good glamour photographer and from there to being a portrait photographern, much in demand in magazines and newspapers.

I feel I owe lots to these women so I will be delighted to attend the reunion. I will be given the chance to talk about some of my funnier involvements with them.

Miss Mew playing at the Commodore with her band Two Lovely Children

But here for some facts that to me are most important. When I used to go to the Number 5 (those of us who knew called it The Five) there was one dancer who was barely five feet tall. She was perfectly proportioned. She was a fave because she often danced to that special tune by the Police called Message in a Bottle. One of the times I photographed Sting, he laughed when I told him the story of Little Mary.

Little Mary liked to drink. Leon Brandolini, the original owner of The 5, had to stock extra bottles of Grand Manier.

A little known story about Little Mary is that she was a superb seamstress. Once she had retired she was hired by one of the best modern dancers of our city. Her name was (she now teaches dance) Cori Caulfield. She was damned in having large breasts. Little Mary designed outfits for her that kept them tight to her body and did not move.

I often went with Little Mary to her fave restaurant, La Bodega on Main.

Gary Taylor's

She came to my house 8 years before she died because she wanted me to take a portrait of her which she was going to use to get a city backing of her sewing business. I was most pleasantly surprised how she hit it off with my wife Rosemary.

I want to write about another dancer that was special in my life who like Little Mary is also gone. Her real name was one I will never find out. It started as Kathleen, it became Fleen and then she dance by the name Topaz and I called her Mis Mew. I photographed her many times. She had the loveliest white complexion. But that was not so. One day she attended one of our Thursday lunches at the Railway Club. She came with no makeup and I was surprised at how many freckles she had. I particularly liked that she dance to Lou Reed songs and always made eye contact with the men around the stage.

Gary Taylor's

She, a fave dancer Tarren, and another Inga, inspired me to experiment. Some of the photographs I cannot replicate as I have long forgotten how I did them.

I will finish here with a sad but happy note. In those 80s I had a gallery show that was called Homebodies. I would ring the bell at dancers’ homes and be invited for coffee. I would then look around and decide how I was going to photograph them in a domestic setting.

One day I received a call from Fleen who told me, “Alex just because I now live in that fleebag Hotel Niagara , it does not mean that I cannot be part of your series." I showed up at her room and she had a lovely arrangement in the window behind her. And this was the first and last time I photographed Fleen with nothing on.

Rosa 'Sombreuil' 13 August 2026

The Rose Family – Robert Frost – 1928

The rose is a rose,

And was always a rose.

But the theory now goes

That the apple's a rose,

And the pear is, and so's

The plum, I suppose.

The dear only knows

What will next prove a rose.

You, of course, are a rose -

But were always a rose.

When I found this poem I immediately thought of my Rosemary since she was the one who in 1991 gently pushed me to go to a Vancouver Rose Society meeting at the Van Dusen Garden Flora Hall. I could now not live with roses in my little Kits garden. Her name, to my ears, sounds even more beautiful – Rosamaría.

The name Rosemary comes from the Latin phrase rosmarinus, meaning "dew of the sea" (ros meaning "dew" and marinus meaning "of the sea"). In English, folk etymology later reshaped the sound of the word to blend with the unrelated personal names Rose and Mary.

The white rose here is Rosa ‘Sombreuil’. It has a lovely scent, blooms for months and is a climber.

Rosa ‘Sombreuil’ -1850 by the breeder Français-André Robert. However, there is a modern controversy: the popular large-flowered climbing rose widely sold as 'Sombreuil' in the United States today is a different modern or 20th-century climber introduced around 1951 by Roses of Yesterday and Today.

The terms analog photograpy or capturing a photograph are not in my vocabulary. There seems to be a renaissance in analog (using film with film cameras) photography now but I believe it is only limited to black and white.

My longtime friend Jeff Gin who is the manager of the Lonsdale Kerrisdale Cameras tells me that young (mostly male) under 30 chaps show up at his store for and want their film processed. They ask for 3x4 inch prints. When they come to pick them up Jeff asks them if they want the negatives. They don’t.

I started printing colour negatives and slides around 1979 in my Burnaby darkroom. One day my Rosemary told me, “You have been complaining about your inability to print colour. I have signed you up for tomorrow Monday for a course on the subject at Ampro Photo Workshops.

She helped me improve my career as I could print for magazines overnight when there was a rush for the magazine to go to print the next day.

And most important using the magenta, yellow, red, blue, cyan and green Kodak Color Print Viewing Filter Kit taught me to understand and correct the photographs that I take in colour with my digital camera,

But I must pleasantly add that in Vancouver now I can purchase colour negative film and Kodak Ektachrome in both the 35mm format and 120. Our local The Lab will process it overnight.

To illustrate this blog I have scanned stuff that I have that I find difficult to trash. If I throw it all away it would seem like I am getting rid of an important part of my life.

In the box of  the Veracruz thin cigars I used to smoke I kept my Spotone kit. With these inks and the brushes we would spot (remove white dust spots) from our photographs. Sometimes I had to scrape stuff from the photos and that is why the razor blade is there.

The 3 Kodak manuals were my manuals for many years. They have information on colour temperature, depth of field and lots more. Lastly the blondish woman was called Sherley. We used the negative to calibrate our colour enlargers. Shirley famously was a problem for the very good photographer that Oscar Peterson was. His subjects were black so Shirley was not help. I believe that the term "the colour purple" came from the problem of printing negatives of black people. For years Kodak marketed film made in India that rendered darker complexions better. Some photographers used that film to add a built-in fake sun tan.

Now with my excellent Epson V700 scanner and my Epson P700 colour printer my inkjets are superior to anything I might have done in that last century. They are properly colour balanced thanks to my Rosemary.

I wonder if the analog photography guys will ever warm up to colour?

Sketch by Eduardo Bettencourt

Photographs - Ed Gifford

I like to use the expression above because as a portrait photographer I am almost always behind my camera. I am rarely photographed. My fried, photographer Ed Gifford took my portrait in July and he made also an artistic version of it.

Photograph - Storme Morrison

Storme Morrison took my portrait with my Asahi Pentax S-3 loaded with extremely sharp Kodak Technical Pan (lots in my fridge since the film was discontinued in 2005).

Last year my first purchased camera, 1959 in Austin, Texas, a Pentacon-F stopped working. My friend Gary Cullen made a new shutter for it as he has the black cloth of the shutter. My friend Curtis Daily who lives in Portland, was visiting and said we should test it He took my portrait with Pancho and the camera was loaded with Kodak Ektachrome which is still sold in Vancouver not only in 35 mm but in the 120 medium format. Our local The Lab processed it overnight. They are the only ones who do Ektachrome in all of Canada.

Photograph by Curtis Daily

The drawings were done by my Angola-born friend Eduardo Bettencourt yesterday at our Sylvia Hotel tertulia. He speaks many languages including Spanish. He is a published poet.

Taken by my Welsh Neighbour Ian Galsworthy on my birthday last year.