Wednesday, January 27, 2010


Every couple of days as I watch the present rush past me like a hummingbird on amphetamines I find a need to reflect and exchange thoughts with three friends in particular. They are writer and novelist John Lekich, designer Ian Bateson and freelance writer and English eccentric Mark Budgen. It is with the latter that I spend many minutes per day discussing the state of journalism. Of late it has been all about pay walls on the internet.

John Lekich, a once avid television (John would never utter that as TV) viewer restricts himself to the Turner Classics Channel and even that one is losing some of its luster as Lekich finds he has seen most of those films. He does not indulge on Twitter as Twitter would ban his beloved ajective, syntax and good writing.

Ian Bateson, who has a small but efficient design firm called Baseline Type & Graphics has a deep interest in social change. Of late Bateson has been exploring new ways to do business. One of these has been in navigating the business social networks like Linkdin and social networks like Facebook. He has been communicating with like-minded designers but finds that most comments are very short and mostly banal.

Mark Budgen, somehow went from sound recordings on records and bypassed everything that happened in-between and incorporated the iPod and podcasts to his life. He listens to esoteric classical music stations from Norway and reads the Guardian and the NY Times on line with great detail. Budgen is very informed on trends even though he has never driven a car or had a driver’s license. It was in the 80s that he got rid of his credit cards.

I have another friend writer Les Wiseman, who ever since I met him back in the late 70s always knew who was the latest very good but obscure rock singer or the finest up-and-coming porn star. It is no surprise to me that he now has Facebook friends that number in the three digits and that some of his e-mail messages to me have this at the bottom:

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network

Many of his friends are reformed and aging punk rockers who spat on the stage while performing but now have developed fine manners. I looked at some of the profiles of these people and it occurred to me that most of us see the world as a past/present/future continuum and in that order. Some others live in the past. But using lateral thinking I do believe that Les Wiseman and his friends have simply changed the past/present/future configuration to future/present/past and look, paradoxically ahead to the past.

I am not too sure that what follows has any relevance to the above.

It was in October, 1981 that Les Wiseman and I spent most of a late afternoon and long evening at Gary Taylor’s Rock Room trying to secure an interview and photo session with ex-New York Dolls guitarist Johnny Thunders who was in town to play with his band. His band included one Rat Scabies on drums. Until Thunders finally did himself in on a drug overdose in 1991 many who went to his performances where like the Vancouver Sun photographers who used to collect at the hairpin curve in Westwood waiting for some racing car driver to crash and kill himself. Johnny Thunders concerts were full of those waiting to see death on stage.



In 1981 I still subscribed to the idea that a camera recorded an event, exactly as it was and that the only personal interpretation to be gleaned from a photograph was the accidental or random fact that the photographer chose to press the shutter now as opposed to then or in a bit.

I snapped pictures of Thunders throughout the night mostly backstage. He would disappear to the bathroom for long half hours where he probably pierced with a needle whatever little patch of skin that was left that was intact. You can see here Les Wiseman’s account (part of it) on this Vancouver Magazine tear sheet. I know of many who think this is one of the pest snaps I ever took.

By 1986 Annie Leibovitz had changed the world of photography. It was New York City photographer Gregory Heisler who said for the record (American Photographer) something like, “Before Annie we could photograph people as they were and we took the best portrait we could. Now because of her we have to photograph people doing something.”

By 1986 my rock shoots for Vancouver Magazine had gotten ever more elaborate. We had enough clout that we would reject to photograph The Cramps while performing and insisted and demanded (and got our wish) to photograph them back stage, exclusively without any other journalists or photographers. By 1986 we had the custom of featuring a local rocker in a Christmas spread. In December 1986 Les Wiseman decided on heavy metal singer Darby Mills.

Out of the blue I decided to photograph her, dressed in a white teddy) with 100 white teddy bears. I filled my wife’s very large Audi with the bears which I obtained from the owner of a West Vancouver store called Bears Toy Store. The picture is slick and I used a complex lighting setup.


John Lekich would appreciate the Darby Mills shot. He would appreciate and probably count to see if indeed there are 100 teddy bears in there. Lekich might not understand the on-the-fly virtuosity of Johnny Thunders who might play brilliantly for 5 minutes and then crash for an hour with a cocktail of Courvoisier and heroin. In some ways many would say that my incidental grab shot of Thunders represents that momentary brilliance of the doomed man.



In a similar way I have approached nude portraits with elaborate lighting, large cameras and exotic locations. Even when I used my more neutral studio the cameras were still big and the lights powerful. I took some pictures on Monday of Anita a new model I have discovered who hails from Prince George. She has an easy smile (she had a bit of time following my instructions not to). She looks very young yet she is 35. I look at her pictures and see no connection to Darby Mills and all those bears. I see a solidarity to my images of Johnny Thunders.

Is simple more authentic? Is more elaborate less honest? As I pressed the shutter of my Nikon FM-2 (not much different than the Pentax MX I used to photograph Thunders) to photograph Anita in my living room, I felt a rush of youth as if, indeed the past were in front of me and all I had to do was to reach and find all that I thought I had lost, right there.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Why should a horror film be just a horror film? To me, The Company of Wolves is a fairy tale; it’s got all those elements plus a lot more. And we know that fairy tales aren’t innocent any more.
Neil Jordan



The Company of Wolves was a story in a story in a story, which is actually a dream a girl dreams within which her grandmother tells a story.
Neil Jordan

Monday, January 25, 2010

Evening At Home
(with bitterness)

There you are
Sitting before me,
Relaxed…sprawling, almost,
Your newspaper making little
Hackneyed rustlings.
And I am here
In the red armchair,
Hands loose in my lap,
Doing nothing.
Dreaming.

Not a word has joined us
For half an hour.
The silence is not expectant,
Not comfortable-
A dull, slate colored silence.

I ask myself, wonderingly:
“How can you miss someone
Who is right before you?”
Because I miss you,
I am unspeakably lonely
Even as I gaze upon you.
(You turn a page…there is a
Crackling.
You light another cigarette.
And I reach for a magazine
Three months old.)

Such As These – Dolores de Iruretagoyena de Humphrey, Mexico D.F. 1955


I became curious this evening thinking about my beautiful Aunt Dolly, my mother’s younger sister, with whom I have not had a word for at least 37 years. When my mother died in 1972, Aunt Dolly called me to tell me that it was such a pity that my mother had died a thief. A thief she was as she had kept what was left of my grandmother’s jewels. Most of them had been pawned (my mother's side of the story) to finance my Uncle Tony’s divorce and Aunt Dolly’s divorce to Uncle Joe Tow, both in Argentina where divorce was not recognized. My aunt had no words of comfort for me at my mother’s death. She told me that I, too was a thief by association. That was the last time I ever talked to her.

Through the years I have missed my Aunt Dolly who was our family’s Audrey Hepburn. Aunt Dolly was beautiful, slim and knew how to dress, wear jewelry and hold a martini glass with class. She could also write very well. When I was in the Argentine Navy in the 60s I corresponded with Aunt Dolly. I think I may have not only honed the few writing skills I might have now with those letters but in retrospect perhaps it wasn’t only from my father that I inherited a desire to write.

Aunt Dolly is not well as she is close to 90. I will probably never speak to her again. Today I had a pang of curiousity and I opened a book of poetry (in Spanish and in English) she published in Mexico in 1955. I read this poem and it wrenched my heart.

Her second husband, Bill Humphrey was an American geologist, very handsome with a nose that had been broken a few times in a boxing ring. Bill was tough. He mistreated Dolly’s son Robin and was not too kind to Robin’s sister Dolores. Bill loved his wine red 1955 Buick Century which he drove with only his right hand. His left hand was outside the window.

For reasons that I was never able to figure out he treated me with affection even though I was not an altogether likeable boy. I thought he was cool.

I remember the conversations between Dolly and my mother involving the latest problems from Bill and how he had done this or that to Robin and Dolores. People were afraid of the man. I never understood this because I never saw anything but kind attention and a smile in my direction.

When I read this poem I almost cried for my Aunt Dolly and I can picture her alone in her home in Houston. I only wish I could be there and tell her, “In spite of everything I am your nephew and friend.”

Sunday, January 24, 2010


Rosemary loves grapefruit so she starts buying them about now when they can be had for $0.50. She bought two without telling me and just a few days I bought two but told her. Rosemary loves grapefruit and so do I. So I pondered what to write about for Sunday’s blog after visiting my neighbours Robert and Patricia where we have been watching the Inspector Montalbano series (an Italian series that Patricia ordered as DVDs from their winter condo in Phoenix). I got home at 10:30 making the decision to finally get caught up and write my day’s blog on that day.

I saw four big grapefruits in the kitchen so I picked up one and scliced it in half. In Argentina we call a grapfruit a pomelo but in Mexico they call it a toronja. After just about finishing one half of the ruby-red grapefruit (to which I had sprinkled some white sugar) I had an odd feeling. First I thought it had to do with my using a special grapefruit spoon. This is a “recent” invention as I never ever bothered to use them. It was Rosemary who bought the spoons.

The odd feeling became a fond memory as soon as picked up the grapefruit half and squeezed it carefully on the spoon to get every little drop of juice.

It was my mother who did this often and particularly in the morning. In Buenos Aires in the early 50s grapefruits were never pink or red. She would have them after having her coffee and toast which was liberally spread with Argentine queso tipo Roquefort. She invariably had a big smile on her face. Her smile was biggest when she squeezed the grapefruit half as I did just a few minutes ago.

In Mexico is was no different except she complained that Mexicans did not know how to make good cheese. She skipped the expensive imported Roquefort and settled on the Mexican strawberry jam which has to be one of the best anywhere. And then she would feast on her grapefruit, without sugar, and smile as I did today when I squeezed it and remembered my mother.

What my mother did not know is that the hollowed out grapefruit halves have some sort of scent that attracts snails and slugs. I start putting them upside down in my hosta beds just about now. When I check under them every few days I will find many slugs which I will cut (as my mother used to) with scissors.

My mother used scissors to kill slugs in our Buenos Aires garden. It would seem we had no flashlight so she used a candle to see. Slugs are quite nocturnal. One day she got her candle much too close to one of our palm trees. The palm immediately caught fire and the fire raced up in seconds. She called the bomberos. By the time they came the fire was out. And would you believe that the palm tree survived just fine?

I am sure my mother must have been worried for a while but as soon as she saw new growth on that palm she might have had an extra slice of toast with queso tipo Roquefort and then her usual grapefruit halves; all with a big smile on her face as she squeezed the halves to get every drop of juice.

target="external>Queso tipo Roquefort & the NY Times in bed

Saturday, January 23, 2010



When Celia Duthie told me back in December that her sister was going to let go of the last Duthies store in February 2010 I thought about my relationship with bookstores since I began buying books in a pocket book emporium on 6th Street in Austin, Texas back in 1958. There were no porno stores in those days. So a 16 year-old boy with raging hormones could only find information about sex in racy pocketbook novels written by Frank Yerby, The Saracen Blade, Kyle Onstott’s Mandingo or Frank G. Slaughter’s medical novels and Taylor Caldwell's religious” novels like Dear and Glorious Physician (believe it or not even though it was a novelized biography of St Luke the Evangelist it had lots of sex). The Viking by Edison Marshall had graphic sex scenes, in Viking dragon ships. I was deeply dissapointed when all that was removed in the film version, The Vikings (1958) with Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh and Kirk Douglas.

In Mexico City in the late 50s and early 60s I bought every science fiction pocket book I could find plus studying under Ramón Xirau made awoke an interest in the Greek philosphers and for some reason Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza.

In Buenos Aires in the mid 60s I found good books in subway stations. They were cheap editions of Argentine classics like Martín Fierro, and epic poem by José Hernández, or such novels as Ernesto Sábato’s Sobre Héroes y Tumbas. It was at the Anglo-German bookstore Pygmalion on Calle Corrientes where my father had purchased his Dickens A Tale of Two Cities and Leslie Charteris’ The Saint series. My mother bought her Graham Greene at Pigmalion and it was at Pigmalion where I bought Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s A Phenomenon of Man, Dag Hammarskjöld’s Markings and The Philosophy of Hegel, Edited With an Introduction by Carl J. Friedrich. I never noticed Jorge Luís Borges perusing the stacks even though he was blind. Alberto Manguel says he first met Borges while working at Pigmalion. It was in 1964 that Manguel became a reader to Borges.



My wild Correntina aunt, Sarita Pereira-Rego de Irureta Goyena introduced me to Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén when she gave me a copy of Sóngoro Cosongo.

By the time I returned to Mexico City I was an inveterate reader so I went to bookstores in late evenings after the movies. Both in Buenos Aires and in Mexico City, movie houses are near bookstores that remain open after the late shows. Not having ever read Borges or Cortázar in Argentina I began to buy cheap Mexican editions in those late night stores.

Books in English were expensive and hard to find. The best place was Sanborn’s the Mexican drugstore chain. They always had the latest pocketbooks at reasonable prices. They were a good source for my science fiction interest.

It was in Vancouver where thanks to Duthie’s and a friendship with Celia and her husband Nick that I became more of a literate snob and started reading in English. I would walk into the Duthies downtown and as soon one of the employee/managers saw me (Dave Kerfoot was one of them) he would say to me, “Alex we ordered in the latest Jerome Charyn for you.” I had never ordered the Charyn in question but they knew I would buy it every time.

With the demise of Duthies I can safely say that I have never read so much and so cheaply. The remainder section of Chapters, and the several very good second hand bookstores in Vancouver have provided me with hours of reading pleasure.

With room no longer available at home I have decided not to buy books anymore. For the last two months I have been learning of the delights to be found in our Vancouver Public Library (and I would like to add the word System). The VPL allows me to find books on line and to order them delivered to my nearest branch (Oakridge) at no charge.

I no longer need to buy books yet…


My friend Grant Simmons who owns DISC and prints all my colour slides and plant scans as exquisite giclées (high end inkjets on extra thick art paper) told me he was going to Cuba for a holiday. I immediately told him of two books that I would lend him for his trip. One may be a little obvious, Martin Cruz Smith’s Havana Bay but the other isn’t.

It was at the Chapter’s remainder section that I found, a year ago Adiós Hemingway by Leonardo Padura Fuentes (an English translation by John King). I would have never found this book or author in any Vancouver bookstore (perhaps Sophia Books). I would have probably not found it in the stacks of the Vancouver Public Library in a random search. Yet once I found the book at Chapter’s I located other novels by the author, in Spanish, at Sophia Books.

This makes me wonder if I should not visit Chapters, every once in a while. And spend some money.

Friday, January 22, 2010



I have written before here how it came about that I photographed Vancouver Province sports writer Jim Taylor twice within a week back in 1984.

As the 21st century distances itself from my 20th this photograph is one I think about quite often. It has all to do with that other (one of them being, “the best price is free”) mantra of the 21st century which is causing the slow disappearance of a lot of what was excellent. The mantra is “good enough”. More and more and particularly in the profession of photography the combination of a low (or, free) price and a picture that is good enough (it might meet a minimum requirement) is all that is needed for a magazine, a newspaper, a brochure or an ad.

Many have spent lots of money and time studying typography and design and now in this century too good usually means too expensive. So good enough and a low price is dismantling the classic design firms in Canada and around the world. The million-plus fonts and million-plus colours found in a computer make the hiring of a designer superfluous.

Nobody would ever argue that a man with a rifle is a soldier. Most would agree that the man would have to be trained as a soldier to be soldier. But the logic of this does not follow the logic that a person with a camera is not always a photographer and that anybody who can use computer driven design programs is not always a designer of the graphic kind. Nobody would assert that anybody who knows the ins and outs of Microsoft Word is a writer.

In 1984 designer and art director (Vancouver Magazine) Chris Dahl saw my first pictures of Jim Taylor and demanded to know why my pictures either showed him without glasses or, when he had them on, he was not looking at the camera. My explanation that I could not avoid the reflection of my flash on his glasses was not good enough for Dahl. I was dispatched to take them again and to make sure that Taylor was looking at the camera.



I tried to argue with Dahl that my pictures, right, were well exposed and sharp and that, was good enough. Dahl became mildly enraged and said, “Go back and take some pictures that we can both be proud of. And stop making the motions of being a photographer. Be one!”

He was absolutely right. We need more Chris Dahls in this world if we are going to lift ourselves from the mediocrity that is seizing this century.

Thursday, January 21, 2010



When I located these files of pictures I took of my two daughters in La Conner, Washington in 1988 there were several thoughts and memories that came to mind. When I saw Hilary’s pictures and noticed her blond hair with her dark eyes I immediately connected with the film Baby Doll which I had seen at about the same time as I found the La Conner negatives. In the film Carroll Baker also was blond and had dark eyebrows.

In the pictures of Ale (Alexandra) she does not smile in any of them. I have always read in her face (even in her mostly happy moments) the look of some tragedy that is within her. I think I know.

When Ale was three we had a live-in helper, Rosa, in our Mexico City home because both Rosemary and I worked all day. The details are hazy but somehow Rosa was able to locate me and she told me on the phone that Ale had drunk and emptied a bottle of Carbona (carbon tetrachloride) which she had found under the kitchen sink. In the late 60s this product was used to remove stains from upholstery.



I rushed home to find my daughter barely breathing and with her eyes closed. I opened her eyes and all I could see was the white of the eyes. I called Ale’s pediatrician who told me to induce vomiting and then wrap Ale in a warm blanket and to take her to the hospital.

Years before in Nueva Rosita, Coahuila I had been a Boy Scout. I sat down for a few minutes and tried to remember what I had learned. I had learned that certain poisons because they were corrosive should not be removed from the body in the way the doctor had indicated. I put Ale under the tap of the tub and ran cold water until she came to. Then I called Pirulí (a neighbour) who drove me around the block to a doctor who had a home practice in our area. He immediately used a stomach pump and told me that had I done as the other doctor had indicated, my daughter would not have made it to the hospital alive.

A year later Rosa and Ale went for a walk to the nearby Bebederos which was a beautiful boulevard with huge eucalyptus and a center dirt road that people from a nearby riding club used to ride their horses. Ale was enjoying the flowers that grew on the side of the boulevard and bent over to pick some. A little girl, perhaps just a bit older said, “Those are my flowers.” She picked up a piece of brick and threw it at Ale. It hit her on the forehead and she began to bleed like crazy. When Rosa arrived with Ale both were drenched in blood. I went over to the nearby doctor who told me that I need not worry as head wounds were always bloody. He then made some banderetas, a sort of little flags that he cut with scissors from a roll of adhesive tape. He used these to bring the edges of the would (a largish cut) together. Ale did not need stitches and just a little trace of the brick wound has remained to this day. At age four, Ale could not explain to me why the little girl had been so vicious.


Both Ale and Hilary were born in Mexico. Hilary (Hilarious) is a generally quite a serious person with an easy smile and a gentle disposition. Ale to this day is very Mexican. She speaks Spanish with a strong chilango (Mexico City Spanish) accent. My grandmother who did get to see Ale but was in an institution with dementia, would say of Ale, “Se le pasea el alma por el cuerpo.” (He soul goes on a trip around her body.) What this means is that Ale takes her time with things. Generally like most Mexicans she isn’t all that punctual and she loves to do things extemporaneously. She likes to drop in without calling.

Most would say she is a happy person. But discern that sadness in her face that I see in so many Mexicans. They seem to be carrying the burden of the Spanish conquest, the many dictatorships and a revolution on their shoulders. I see this sadness in the faces of little children, many, who in the poverty of Mexico never experience childhood. Is this a Mexican sadness in her face caused by a near-death experience so early in her life?



I would say that I am pleased when I see Hilary smile. It reassures me and reminds me of my mother. And in some strange way when I glance at my eldest daughter’s face and see that melancholy, I, too, wonder why a little girl would not let her pick a flower. I also see in that sadness the sadness of my father who was never a happy man. That Ale is so happy in Lillooet just shows me that some of us, including the present blogger, find happiness in being blue.

Alexandra & Hilary in La Conner