26 June 2026

16 May 2026

On days when it is not raining (I today was just fine in the afternoon) I ride my 3-speed bike to Jericho Beach. Every time I take a purposely underexposed photograph with my Fuji X-3 of a view of the city from a park on Point Grey Road at the end of Musqueam View Street.

In the last few years I have seen the disappearance of the kind of photography I used to do for magazines and newspapers in that last remote century. Most of the view photographers that I know that have not gone to retire to the Gulf Islands (God’s Waiting Room) shoot street photographs.

A few of the street photographers in the last century are now seen as mentors like Cartier-Bresson.

I can assert that when I go to Buenos Aires or Mexico I immediately shoot street photographs. But in Vancouver that is becoming more drab by the day I am not inspired. There is one photographer who pretty well insulted me and my only thought is that there is now a deep division between those who shoot street photography and the very few who like me do portraits.

I wonder if the problem is a combination of the proliferation of phones and digital cameras with our reluctance, after that terrible pandemic to talk face to face. We live now in the age of emoji/emoticons. We live in the age that if you want to talk to someone on the phone, the protocol is to text first.

My thoughts right now is if I take this Vancouver photograph every day from the same spot am I a landscape/street photographer? In Vancouver if you take a picture of a red fire hydrant it is of no importance but if you “document” fifty of them is it art?  There are a few photographers here that do that (not fire hydrants). Because I have at least fifty Vancouver views from the same spot, am I an artist?

Jericho Beach -11 June 2026

Jericho Beach -Lens Baby - 17 June 2026

Because I speak two languages, English and Spanish, I am constantly comparing words. I would say that I have become a language studier and I follow trends particularly that of close to extinct words and expression.

As an excuse to post here some of the portraits I have taken of my Ukrainian friend Olena I researched the expression “a work of art”. This expression is in little use as it has been replaced by stunning or iconic.

I started taking photographs in 1959 in Austin when I purchased a Pentacon-F SlR manufactured it what was then called Russian Occupied Germany. Since then I have taken thousands of photographs of which most are portraits. At my age of 83 I am sort of beginning to accept that I am an artist. One of the reasons is that many of my photography peers have disappeared in the British Columbia Gulf Islands which a friend calls God’s Waiting Room. I cannot understand how they retire and now walk in the forests and gaze at the sea. I don’t see myself retiring until I meet with my soon-to-happen oblivion.

While I am not sure if I am an artist, when I look at the many photographs I have taken of Olena I would call her a living work of art. With her in front of my camera I cannot fail.

The story on how we met is funny. Some years ago, around Christmas I received an email from a man in Colombia called Alex who had found my webpage and wanted some photography advice. Because it was Christmas I forgot to reply. Around 2016 I was having my hair cut by Kerrisdale stylist Richard Jeha. He told me, “Alex I have an assistant who speaks your language. I want to introduce you to her.” And so I was introduced to Helena although she told me her name was Olena and that she was from Ukraine. She added that she had moved from Colombia to Vancouver recently. I told her about the man who had communicated to me from Bogotá. I was startled by her reply, “He is my husband."

Olena has posed for me many times and the photographs you see here I took with a new film called Rollei Infrared Film. It is not true infrared. It has an extended range into the red. It shares with the discontinued Kodak b+w Infrared Film in not having what is called an anti-helation layer. This means that some of the light that hits he in-film negative bounces off, particularly when it is over-exposed. Because of its extended range into the red I told Olena to apply (one of her many talents is that besides colouring hair she is a good makeup artist) purple lipstick so that her lips would not be a deathly white.

The third picture, a killer in my opinion I took with my Fuji X-E3 digital camera. The blue colour of the other two photographs I added as I scanned the negatives with my 22-year-old Photoshop-8.       

Hosta 'Abba Dabba Do' 25 June 2026

I thank her for never have prevented me from buying photographic equipment I told her I needed or ignoring all the money I was spending in matting and framing my photographs for shows in which I rarely sold anything.

I thank her for having made me a gardener. In my age of 83 tending my garden gives me a valid excuse to get up in the morning.

But most of all I thank her for helping me notice small details in everything in my life that would bring a rare smile to my face.

The folks of the American Hosta Society (I gave up my membership last year) pooh-pooh the hosta flowers and praise the variegation of their leaves.  Because of Rosemary I have come to appreciate their beauty particularly when I scan them.

Few might know that both agaves (tequila!) and hostas are members of the very large family of the Asparagaceae.

My Kitsilano dining room - Mamiya RB-67- Kodak Technical Pan - 17 June 2026

Early on, when I married my Rosemary in Mexico City on February 8 1968, I saw her as the decision maker of the family. In 1975 she made the decision that we should move to Vancouver. Every day of my life since, I have thanked her in person or in my memory.

Her most telling decision was to move us from our little strata home in Burnaby to a palace in Kerrisdale with a huge corner garden. We had to pay a $3500 monthly mortgage so I was given a domingo, Spanish for an allowance.

In all those years Rosemary made intelligent financial decisions. That all changed 13 years ago, when I made my first important decision. Our Kerrisdale roof had to be repaired and the bathrooms leaked. We could not afford repairs as we had exhauster our money on buying plants for the garden and our trips abroad.

My decision was to sell the house. She was adamant but I insisted. In the height of the influx of immigrants we sold our house for very good cash. With that cash we helped our two daughters. Rosemary found a good financial advisor, Cameron McClean of BMO Nesbitt Burns.

We bought a little duplex in Kitsilano. Rosemary was not happy. She told me, “We are going to be forced to live in a community (it is a double duplex) with people we might not like (she was right!).

Now as I live day to day with my female cat Niña I have no financial worries. I went to see Cameron McClean and asked him about my expensive interest in printing inkjets almost every day. The inks are expensive as is the paper. Cameron, with that stable voice of his told, “You can keep spending money if that is your love. It will not put a dent on your investments.”

And so my decision, my only one, keeps me relaxed knowing that when I meet my oblivion one of my two daughters or two granddaughters will want to live in the house as it is.             

Rosa 'Baron Girod de L'Ain' & Rosa 'Gabriel Oak' 23 June 2026

 

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem

By that sweet ornament which truth doth give.

The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem

For that sweet odor which doth in it live.

The canker blooms have full as deep a dye

As the perfumèd tincture of the roses,

Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly

When summer’s breath their maskèd buds discloses;

But, for their virtue only is their show,

They live unwooed and unrespected fade,

Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;

Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odors made.

 And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,

 When that shall vade, by verse distils your truth.

William Shakespeare – Sonnet 54

It is amazing to me how some roses can be over-the-top flashy and others subtle. One of the roses, here The Baron, has this barely noticeable white edge at the end of the petals. The other Gabriel Oak is awfully flashy.

Whenever I see a red rose I remember in Spanish  the  Gorge Luis Borges La lluvia. I must note here than in Spanish the title of books and poems will begin in a capital letter but then no more. In La lluvia (The Rain) he writes “la rosa, el curioso color del colorado.” It is almost a complete alliteration because in Spanish we have colorado as a synonym for rojo.

Thanks to my Rosemary, who gently forced me to attend a meeting of the Vancouver Rose Society in 1991 and my beginning to scan roses in 2001, I had to find an excuse to put the scans in my blogs. This I did by writing of their connection to literature. I have in all those years been exposed to many a poem that resides in my memory.

 And of course every rose I look at immediately brings my memory of that beautiful rose that was my Rosamaría.                                                            

Belinda Carr

Sometime in the mid 90s there was an art gallery that featured straight photography. It was called Exposure Gallery and it was on Beatty Street. By straight photography I mean that the gallery had group shows and themed shows that at the time would never have any relevance in the more artsy galleries of our Vancouver.

The relevance of the photograph here is that I did a joint talk with fashion photographer Chris Haylett on figure and fashion photography lighting. I wrote about it here:

Belinda Carr and Rip Georges

Belinda Carr and Rip Georges All Over Again

For my talk I took three b+w Polaroid negative film. When I checked my files on Belinda Carr, the model who posed I found no Polaroid prints. This is because I gave them to her.

That Exposure Gallery was a place where photographers got together to chat about the photographs they took before capture came into the lingo in the later digital age.

Unlike Gallery 881 on East Hastings, those group shows brought us to the same place and the openings were fun. There was little pretension as the proof of the pudding was on the wall.

Key to the above photograph and much of my success as a photographer in Vancouver is that Angie at  Beau Photo in the early 80s sold me a Metz focusing spotlight. I bought many metal gobos (go-betweens) and not photographer of that time had or used one.              

I could not resist so I sandwiched the other two Polaroids.

My parents

In this vacuous 21st century that I call The Age of the Emoji, it is impossible to not notice that famous people die every day so we have put up their pictures in social media and just comment how wonderful they were. Then there is the wishing a happy birthday to people who are long dead.

Today is father’s day and nobody seems to acknowledge that it is also grandfather’s day. Pictures of fathers are placed in social media with perhaps the one comment on how they are missed.

My awareness of stuff related to my father began when I was a little boy in Buenos Aires and my mother would tell me, “Alex, you will never understand because you will never be a mother”. She died in 1972 and it was only after that I figured out I should have told her, “Mother you will never understand because you will never be a father.”

Few today will write what it is like to be a father. For me today I have to remember my Rosemary as she is the person who made me a father as she had our two daughters Alexandra and Hilary.

We left Mexico City in 1975 for Vancouver because Rosemary said that as things were at the time in Mexico it was not a good place for our children. Until I had a good income as a photographer in Vancouver by 1977/78 Rosemary used whatever money we had to take care of our daughters.

She told me we were going to live in Burnaby so that I could go to Vancouver to find work but (very important) we would be close enough to Coquitlam so Ale and Hilary could learn French. One day years later when Ale said, “Me and some guys…” Rosemary decided that Ale had to be put in a private school which ended up being York House. With some prodding on her part both our daughters went to university. Ale attended UBC and Hilary went to Simon Fraser.

Once we were grandparents Rosemary and I made sure our granddaughters had all the opportunities to improve their lives. We paid for dance, swimming and piano lessons. We took our granddaughters to Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay. We took them to the Main Branch of the Vancouver Public Library, at first in the children’s department. We did our best to inculcate them into reading.

I am afraid now that in this century when grandfather’s day is not acknowledged that as one I am now simply an old man who is obsolete, redundant, retired and inconsequential.

And yes today I remember my father George fondly and I remember all that he did to make me a better person. Best of all I thank him for inheriting me his ability to be a journalist. I write my blog and this one is blog 6942. He would be proud.

I must add that besides having a father I had a few others. These were the Brothers and Fathers of Holy Cross who gave me an outstanding education in my four years at St. Edward's High School in Austin, Texas.

My Bother Fathers Remembered

I will acknowledge that mentors can be both women and men. But few might not know who the original mentor was. When Ulises  went to fight in troy he hired a mentor calle Mentor to teach his son Telemachus.

Rosa 'Zéphirine Drouhin'8 May 2025

One of the wonders of this 21^st century for me is that I can place the word “etymology” in Google and in most cases I can find a satisfactory answer to my question as to where a word or expression came from. Today in trying to find ways of writing something to accompany my rose scans I enquired as to why roses are associated with the Virgin Mary.

The "Rose Without Thorns": In the 5th century, church fathers like St. Ambrose and Coelius Sedulius noted that, according to legend, roses in the Garden of Eden were thornless before the fall of man. Because Mary was believed to be free from Original Sin (the Immaculate Conception), she became known as the "rose without thorns".

The Rosary: The Catholic prayer devotion known as the Rosary derives its name from the Latin word rosarium, which means "rose garden" or "garland of roses". Historically, the 150 Hail Marys were compared to a spiritual bouquet of roses offered to Mary.

Apparitions: The rose is closely linked to Marian appearances, most famously the 1531 apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, where roses bloomed out of season in the winter as a miraculous sign of her presence. Wikipedia

I will not reveal my belief related to the above Wikipedia explanations as to why roses are closely connected with the Virgin Mary. My political and religious beliefs I keep to myself.

But I will point out that one of the best known Latin-American saints (and the first saint of the Americas Santa Rosa de Lima is associated with my birthday on August 31s.

My parents always planned my birthday part in our Buenos Aires garden in Coghlan, in late 40s and early 50s. Unfortunately a few were rained out.  Why? In Buenos Aires there is a usual storm on the 30^th called “La Tormenta de Santa Rosa” as that is the saint’s date of celebration.

My Rosemary heard from me that story many times and she would even point out when it would rain in some of my 52 birthdays with her.

And to this day I find it musically pleasant to say out loud, “Rosamaría,”her name in Spanish.

And yes I have a scan of a rose without thorns (the correct botanical name is prickles!). That is Rosa ‘Zépherin Drouhin’.