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 20^th 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.

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.

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.