Rosemary - 1969 present in our bedroom

 

Some people have family albums. They are probably folks who were born in that last century. Family pictures are now stored in phones. Many are lost when they malfunction.

I have those family albums because I am from that last century and I was born in 1942. I also have the first photograph I took in 1958 with my new Pentacon-F SLR purchased for $100 when I was in school in Austin, Texas.

I took my mother’s double advice – A house is not a home until framed pictures are on the wall. – Pictures framed are pictures saved.

Part of my portrait style is that I never (almost) photograph anybody smiling. I believe that a serious face looking into my lens reveals a bit of her/his essence.

This framed portrait of my Rosemary I took in Mexico City in 1969. I had no lights. I used an Asahi Pentax S-3 I had bought used in Mexico City. It was the first nude photograph I ever took. The framed photograph is cropped so not bits show.

An unanswered question I never asked (why is it that when we become curious the person that can answer it is dead?) is why she had this delicate sad face? Was she seeing her death 51 years later?

I often cite Jorge Luís Borges and particularly in relation to this portrait. He wrote often that first times become repeated first times. When look at this portrait from my bed (when lights are out I can imagine it ) it seems like I have just taken that photograph. What might have I instructed her to do? At that time we had little time. Was she worried about money?

Whatever the unanswered questions never asked, my Rosemary is in our bedroom gazing at our two cats and me.

Only another portrait photographer might understand the above.

Left & bottom Helleborus 'Honeymoon' - Right - Helleborus 'Wedding Crasher' - 22 March 2026

In 2018 I went to New York City with my Rosemary. Our hotel was very close to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We arrived when it opened. We were there to see the Michelangelo exhibit. After spending an hour there I asked Rosemary if she would be interested in seeing the David Hockney. We went to it. I then told her about the Rodin. We went to it. Expecting finally a “no” I asked her if she was interested in a exhibit of medieval armour. She went crazy taking photographs of the horse armour.

We left when the museum closed.

The next day it was the Frick, the Guggenheim and MOMA. I will never understand how dense I must have been to have been married (in 2018 it was 48 years) so long and never have known her keen interest in the arts.

Now five years after my Rosemary died today I found out my further dumb density of my brain. Rosemary’s hellebores were always “Rosemary’s hellebores”. Since her death I have come to love them with my scans of them and the obvious fact (I was dense about that) that hellebores are in bloom in February/March when nothing else is.

The scan here is of two hellebores that Rosemary planted together. Do you think that the names and the fact that they are close in the bed is an accident? Is it an example that my Rosemary had a keen sense of humour?

Yes. And the idiot I am.

P.S. Not being able to sleep tonight pass midnight 23 March 2026 I decided to go back to my scanner. You many note that the hellebores are wilting. I scanned them with a paper towel below. Why? On my origin scan the pink hellebore was blue. I was upset as I make sure my 22 year old CRT monitor is calibrated. I thought about it included the paper towel which is indeed white? Why is the pink hellebore blue? The flower reflects lots of UV in conjunction with the scanner light.

That's why! 

Samuel Frid and Joanne Tod's My Father, Bob and I

At the last years of the 20th century Charles Campbell, a former Editor of the Georgia Straight was working at the Vancouver Sun. He created a page called Rear Window especially for moi so that I could write and illustrate with my photographs stuff I had done in the past.

I had forgotten this one until I was rummaging through my files looking for something I could write about. Now that it is 2026 I feel completely out of place as the change I observe is not to my liking.

I received an email from a friend who is an editor for a weekly periodical on an obvious decline. I had sent him/her an email about 3 weeks ago. It was answered yesterday thusly: Sorry I didn’t get the chance to respond. I currently have 18, 458 emails in my inbox. Ninety % of them are unopened, partly because all of us are having trouble grinding things out with a skeleton staff.

Because the periodical does not have a phone or a receptionist communication is only through emails.

This particular Rear Window is dear to me (even though I had forgotten it) as the painting by Joanne Tod is a definite Christmas one with the delightfully confusing title. Is Bob the name of the little boy’s mother? The painting was also the favourite of my red-haired Mexican friend, Samuel Fridd who at the time had a gallery called the Threshold.

When I called the VAG and asked them If I could see this painting again they answered, “We are not going to put it up on the wall just for you.”

Sempervivum tectorum 20 March 2026

Hen and chicks (also known as hen-and-chickens, or hen-widdies in the southern United States) is a common name for a group of small succulent plants. They belong to the flowering plant family Crassulaceae, native to southern Europe and northern Africa. The plants grow close to the ground with leaves formed around each other in a rosette, and propagating by offsets. The "hen" is the main, or mother, plant, and the "chicks" are a flock of offspring,[1] which start as tiny buds on the main plant and soon sprout their own roots, taking up residence close to the mother plant.

Plants commonly referred to as "Hens and chicks" include ground-hugging species of Sempervivum (houseleeks) such as Sempervivum 'Pekinese', S. arachnoideum (cobweb houseleek), and S. tectorum (common houseleek), as well as members of the related genus Jovibarba. The name is also used for some species of Echeveria, Sedum and Bergenia although these plants differ significantly from Sempervivum and Jovibarba, and may require different cultivation and care. Wikipedia

Today in spite of the weather prediction it is a sunny day. I am not going in my bike. I may have a big excuse. My male cat Niño had his teeth cleaned Tuesday morning. They put him to sleep for this. So he has been barely able to walk. He refuses to eat or drink. I am taking him to the vet tomorrow for check-up. So I am cat sitting Niño mostly on my bed.

I did notice my pot of hens and chicks so I decided to scan one of the florets. The colours are happy colours. I can almost smile. Rosemary would have noticed them days before. She would approve of my scan.

Tarren

These days I tell people that I have no interest in women except for my Rosemary who died five years ago. I do welcome dialogue with women as I see them as distinctly different from me as I am a man. In this I also include people who are not of that tradition of women/men. If a trans woman thinks she is a man I accept it. Gay men are men for me.

Since I photographed my Rosemary nude in 1969 (one year after we married) I pursued the taking of photographs of women not wearing much or anything at all. I was looking for the ultimate image that would define eroticism.

Rosemary 1969

Now I stare at framed photograph of Rosemary in my bedroom and I can imagine that moment when she faced my camera. For 52 years we were companions in bed and out of bed. She never did dissuade me from taking all those photographs of so many women.

Now I can look at my photographs and memories of Rosemary and I can truthfully state that she was a perfect woman.

Because I am a Platonist:

A Platonist is a philosopher or adherent who believes that abstract objects—such as numbers, mathematical entities, and ideal forms (e.g., beauty, justice)—exist in a non-physical, non-mental realm independent of human thought and space-time. Based on Plato’s teachings, they view the physical world as an imperfect, changing reflection of these eternal, unchanging truths. Wikipedia

And Rosemary might have been one too, we believed that the quickest cure to the sadness of the loss of a dead cat was to get immediately a new one. Never was that new cat a kitten. We liked to adopt a middle-aged on as learning to mutually get along was part of the fun.

How is this Platonic? I believe that the new cat inherits from the dead cat that perfect form that I call “catness”. A bit of the dead cat shows up in the new one.

The closest I have arrived at this idea with humans and particularly with women (womaness?) is in my observation into the countless photographs that I have on women. One simply stands out. I began to photograph Tarren around 1979 and I have been taking photographs of her until most recently. She has a perfect body (in my eyes) but there is something more in her face and how she looks at my camera.

While I have stated above that I am no longer interested women except for my gone Rosemary, I could be wrong. There is something comforting in looking at my photographs of that perfect woman that is Tarren.