Expect Delays - Be Prepared to Stop
Friday, October 30, 2026
 | | Ned Pratt |
In that
other century I photographed most of Vancouver’s architects. One I particularly
liked and we became friends. Ned Prat’s firm that he inherited previously, designed
and built our Cenotaph and the Burrard Street Bridge. Anyone who has crossed
that bridge recently must know that it needs to have the rust removed and be
repainted.
This city is
one Pratt would no longer understand or recognize. He would see hundreds of
city workers tearing up streets all over and surrounded by ubiquitous orange
cones and with signs (our city mantra) saying – expect delays – construction & be prepared to stop.
My smart
wife Rosemary (New Dublin, Onario) took us away from Mexico City to Vancouver
in 1975. When I drive now (Rosemary died
6 years ago) I sometimes not only communicate with her in my mind but I
find myself saying, “Rosemary you would not recognize and love the city you
brought us to."
Tomorrow I
am going to the Woodward Instructional Resources Centre at UBC at 7:15 to
listen to a lecture by Dr. Wade Davis on Canada and being Canadian. I decided
today to find out where the centre was so I drove to UBC. Tenth Ave is blocked
for about 10 blocks so I went by 16th. When I arrived at the mall I
put my destination on my car navigation device. It did not recognize the place
I wanted to go. My phone did work but… I drove for 45 minutes as streets were blocked
or were dead-ends. I asked at least 20 people if they knew where the centre
was. Nobody knew. When I finally found it I discovered that I could not get there in
my car but had to use some impossible roundabout route. The amount of
construction at UBC exceeds any in our city.
I have three
questions. How many city and university workers are on the payrolls? Do all of these constructions have to be done
at the same time? Why are so many avenues going East/West constantly blocked? A
terrible example is Broadway.
How Pants
Thursday, October 29, 2026
How Pants –
Anne Carson
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
trousers,
too
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
all kinds of
pants went by
yet the
birches linger
Portrait Photography is Doomed
Wednesday, October 28, 2026
 | | Rebecca |
My first
photograph in 1959 was of a classmate in my Austin, Texas boarding school. As a
boy around 8 I could draw likenesses well. I specialized in comic books that
had cowboys like Gene Autrey and or film posters with Randolph Scott.
In Mexico
City, after I met my Rosemary in 1967 and moved to a little house in 1970 I
began to photograph wealthy Mexican families in their homes with my 35mm Asahi
Pentax S-3. I would then process the film and print the pictures in my
bathroom. Because I was competing with portrait studios I was most popular. I
was making good money. In 1975 Rosemary saw no future for our two little girls
so we moved in our VW Beetle to Vancouver. By the late 70s I was a successful
portrait photographer for magazines and newspapers. When we would travel abroad
and especially Mexico City and Buenos Aires I found myself doing what I never
did in Vancouver. This was to shoot street photographs.
I ask myself
rhetorically, “Am I a one trick pony?”
In this 2026
with magazines and newspapers moribund the portrait photographer is as obsolete
as the journalist, the publicist and the graphic designer. There may be a few
photographers somehow making ends meet in weddings.
The cell
phone has become in this century the equivalent of the 19th century Colt
.45 Peacemaker in the US. It has levelled the playing field.
My
photographer friends show me very sharp and colourful photographs they take in
our city streets. If these photographers all mixed their pictures and put them
on a table I would not know who took which one. This is because unless you were
Cartier-Bresson, Vivien Meiers, William Eggleston, Fred Herzog,Mary Ellen Mark
and even Dennis Hopper it is impossible (my opinion) to have an identifiable
personal style if you shoot street
photographs in Vancouver.
I refuse to criticize
their photographs while at the same time I am aware that this one trick pony is doing
something that is doomed to disappear in an age where face to face
communication is fading.
Bifurcating Paths and Harris Tweeds
Tuesday, October 27, 2026
 | | Captain Beefheart |
Because I
have too much time to think, something that is always in my mind since I was a
fan of Captain Beefheart and the lyric “Someone’s had too much too think” from
his song Ashtray Heartaaa, I especially think of the meaning of words in
Spanish and their equivalents in English. I think of word and their
ramifications in how I use them. There are three in my mind a lot. These
are route (routines), cycles and stages.
When I see a
lovely blond woman in her early 20s (remember at 84 I am much too old to be a “viejo verde”or dirty old man) I smile. I
see her as my Rosemary when I first saw her on December 15 1967. That was a
stage in my life I cannot return to.
Some days
when I have many activities I liven up and escape my melancholy. These come in
cycles.
My route to
some sort of sanity is to plan my blogs and put the ideas in my blog book that
is next to my bedside table.
The route
word reminds me of my friend Jim Christy (he has disappeared in Toronto, I believe)
who I hired to build a red stone path in the back garden of our Kerrisdale home
garden. He stopped at a place and asked me, “Alex , to the left is your garage
door and straight ahead is the laneway gate. What should I do?” I answered, “Borges.”
He knew exactly what route to take. Borges wrote a story, El jardín de senderos
que se bifurcan – or the garden with the bifurcating paths.
A note here.
In Spanish the titles of books have only the first word letter capitalized. The
same applies to the names of poems. When I photographed Captain Beefheart we spoke of our love for Harris Tweeds And here a photograph of one of my daily routines. Mid afternoon. I sit down at the head of my dining room table to read while having a large mug of Earl Grey Tea. I adore my Lisbon made but available at my Safeway "natas". The silver device for serving butter at tea has been in my family since I was a little boy. I was never curious to ask my mother where it came from. The plate underneath it Rosemary and I bought in Guanajuato, Mexico.
Writing About Rosemary
Monday, October 26, 2026
I write entirely to find out what I'm
thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and
what I fear. Joan Didion
It has been
impossible for me to escape the loss of my Rosemary who died 6 years ago.
Because her cat Niña, now that her twin brother died in May, she has adopted me
and clings to me all the time. This provides me with an almost guilt-free
excuse to lie clothed on my bed with her and do nothing.
It is not
doing nothing exactly as I am suffering a malady right out of Captain Beefheart’s
Ashtray Heart lyric – Someone’s had too much to think. I do this lots.
After
Rosemary died I read Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking which she began to
write the morning after her husband died at the dinner table. In the book she
writes that she took John Gregory Dunn’s clothes to a store but could not take
his shoes as she thought he might just come back and need them.
In my closet
I have all of Rosemary’s shoes. I have an affinity for her shoes because we
always went shopping together for her shoes and she often bought that ones I
suggested. The shoe in the scan here we bought in a shoe store on Avenida
Florida in Buenos Aires.
I have now
written 7085 blogs and few of the ones since December 9, 2020 do not mention
Rosemary and my melancholy. But Didion’s statement here is always in my mind. I
am no Didion but I may have inherited a little from my father who was a
journalist and my mother who was a poet. Sitting down here in my oficina to
write this is a bit comforting as sharing my feelings of Rosemary somehow
connect me to the woman she was.
After two
years of studying philosophy under Ramón Xirau in Mexico City in 1962/63 I
became a Platonist. I disagree with Plato who said humans could perceive
perfection but not actually see it or experience it.
My technique
to take my portraits, especially my family portraits (many of them framed and
on the walls of my home) was to always put my camera at eye level. I rarely used
a telephoto lens opting for a 35mm or 50mm which placed me close to my subject.
I never asked them to smile and they looked straight into the lens.
When you see
these portraits and the one here of Rosemary I believe I can plunge into their
soul and perceive some of their spirit. To me that is perfection.
The
photograph here of Rosemary I took in 1969. It is framed and on the opposite wall
from my bed. She stares at me and keeps at it when I turn off the lights. I
never asked her why she had this sad look on her eyes even when she might have
had a tiny smile.
I will never
know.
Lost & Found
Sunday, October 25, 2026
 | | Alhambra |
These days,
as I look around my house, I am overwhelmed as to how I
can deal with so much stuff. Had I lived in Port Alberni all my life I would
not have so much of it. A major part of all this are purchases I made with
Rosemary in our life together for 52 years. We travelled to many places and
bought souvenirs.
In my oficina I have extensive nicely kept in
alphabetical order, all my negatives and slides. I have separate filing cabinet
drawers reserve to writers, gardeners and our garden pictures, women, travel
and two reserved to the family.
A few days ago I became upset when I could not find
photographs I had taken when Rosemary, our daughters and I went to London,
Paris and then drove from Madrid to Málaga in a rented car. I just had the date
wrong and found them filed in the family file under the date 1985- Paris –
London- Spain.
The negatives are pristine as are the prints I printed
in my Burnaby darkroom (we moved to Kerrisdale a year later). One of the prints
of the Sacré-Cour church in Paris had our young Hilary on the bottom left.
Because I have a scanner I decided to scan it instead of scanning the negative.
I find the deterioration of the print (not archival Ilford paper) lovely. The
red prints here are scans of the original negatives that I colourized by adding
yellow and red with my Photoshop 8.
Something has to be said
about “everything in its place is order | | Toledo from spot where El Greco painted his landscape |
 | | Near Toledo |
 | | Sacre-Coeur - Paris with Hilary |
 | | La Giralda in Seville - my daughter Alexandra in bottom |
A Spark of Her Life
Saturday, October 24, 2026
 | | Bougainvillea glabra 24 October 2026 |
Some might say that I am obsessive about missing my Rosemary
who died 6 years ago. As I see it they don’t understand what it is like to have
been married for 52 years. In all aspects she was my intellectual equal except she was better at finances.
I noticed today that her Bougainvillea glabra that she
planted in a pot was in bloom. It has been in my bedroom since she died 6 years
ago.
Both of us were not religious but we did believe in a life
spark or force. When I photographed my family I always had my camera close and
at eye level and I would ask them to look into the lens. Somehow in those eyes
that stare at me in so many framed photographs in my house walls, I can
recognize that unique spirit or Platonic essence drawing me into them.
Rosemary and I both believed that when one of our cats would
die we would immediately get a new (middle-aged) one. We both thought that
something of the dead cat transferred into the new one. The new cat had something
of the old cat in him (or her).
To this I can now add how melancholic I get when I look at
some of her perennials still blooming in my fall garden. Are they Rosemary
sparks beckoning me?
And so these little bougainvillea blooms have a little bit
of Rosemary’s spirit, soul or spark.
I can sense her in them. And I cry.
|
