Saturday, September 25, 2010



Yesterday Saturday was a day in which most of what happened did so because Lauren and Rebecca’s mother, Hilary did not read a birthday party invitation correctly. She told us that Lauren had to go (and I was to take her and pick her up) to a party between 2 and 4. Since I usually pick up Hilary at work at 6 and bring her home for dinner with her daughters and my wife, I had to plan accordingly. It was around 12 that on my way to buy some vegetables to make that evening’s planned stir-fry it occurred to me that with fall with us I had to record that with portraits of the granddaughters in our garden. I stopped the car and called Rosemary to tell the girls to bring appropriate clothing.

At about 12:30 the girls arrived. Lauren was dressed as a princess, per instructions from the birthday girl’s parents. Rebecca had left her chosen dress at home. The party was to be from 4 to 6. This meant that Hilary would have to find herself to our home by bus. It meant that I really could not photograph the girls together. I meant I would have to drive back to Rebecca’s to find her dress (it had been left at the foot of the stairs).


The garden was sunny. There were few spots with low contrast with which I could use the limited capabilities of my iPhone t advantage. I decided to photograph Lauren with Casa, the big cat. They bond. But it was not so easy. When one looked good the other one didn’t. When Lauren was in the right pose, Casa would move away. I did the best I could. At 4 I took Lauren to the party and picked up Rebecca’s dress.

When I returned I found that Rebecca had fallen asleep in her mother’s old bedroom. She was having a siesta. When she woke up, startlingly she said, “Papi can we have tea?” This meant that I would make a large pot of good tea and serve it, in our living room, in my mother’s best from her tea cup collection. At least one of them anyway as the cup with the fuchsias I bought at the Empress gift shop for Rosemary, quite a few years ago when I had traveled there to photograph some politician I do not remember. But I do remember that my companion was makeup artist Nicole Scriabin and she approved of my purchase.

Rebecca came down. I had asked her to put on the dress. She did not and showed up in shorts and a T shirt. “Rebecca I thought it would have been nice to have tea all dressed up.” I should have not said anything considering that I was wearing jeans and sported a three-day beard.

We sat down and I told here we would conversar. I explained that we often use words without being aware of their provenance and original meaning.



conversar.

(Del lat. conversāre).

1. intr. Dicho de una o de varias personas: Hablar con otra u otras.

2. intr. Mil. Hacer conversión.

3. intr. desus. Vivir, habitar en compañía de otros.

4. intr. desus. Dicho de una o más personas: Tratar, comunicar y tener amistad con otra u otras.

5. tr. Ec. narrar



In Spanish it literally means to speak in verse. And I particularly like the third meaning from my on line dictionary of the Real Academia Española. It states: To live, to inhabit, in the company of others!

I told Rebecca that when I arrived to Mexico City I was repelled by a workd used by Mexicans who eschew conversar. They opt for the cranky-sounding platicar. A plática can be a formal lecture given by a professor. For me the word is much to high-falutin. To this day I cringe every time my chilanga (one from Mexico City) daughter Ale insists on using this word over the more poetic one.

At this point Rosemary interjected with the word charlar which is the equivalent in Spanish to chat.


charlar.

(Del it. ciarlare).

1. tr. parlar (‖ revelar, decir lo que se debe callar).

2. intr. Conversar, platicar.

3. intr. coloq. Hablar mucho, sin sustancia o fuera de propósito.


I especially note its third citation which says: To talk a lot without substance of purpose.

At this point I found it necessary to bring in a work much used by the Spanish. This is tertulia.


tertulia.

(De or. inc.).

1. f. Reunión de personas que se juntan habitualmente para conversar o recrearse.

2. f. En los antiguos teatros de España, corredor en la parte más alta.

3. f. En los cafés, lugar destinado a mesas de juegos de billar, cartas, dominó, etc.

4. f. Arg. y Ur. luneta (‖ asiento de teatro).

5. f. Cuba. Conjunto de localidades situadas en el piso alto de un cine o teatro.

estar de ~.

1. loc. verb. coloq. conversar (‖ hablar).


It is defined as a reunion of people (usually men as women would have been acused of meeting to gossip and never to discuss lofty topics!) who meet habitually to converse. In Spain this usually happened in cafes and men would discuss such topics as, “Was Magellan the first person to circumnavigate the world seing that he was killed in the island of Mactán in the Philippines?” Its second meaning is interesting, too. It is the highest corridor in the old Spanish theatres of the golden age. The nobility would be up there and the masses down there. Now in such places as the Buenos Aires Teatro Colón, the opera enthusiasts who stand up in the upper stratosphere or gallinero (hen coop) are usually the ones who know opera while the well dressed parvenus below show off their jewels. That aspect of the lofty tertulia has changed.

Perhaps our Saturday afternoon teas might become little tertulias and Rebecca and I can discuss stuff that is not in the periphery of things and people Ga Ga.

Rebecca did put on her dress. While she was getting ready she had somehow patted down her glorious hair. It looked flat. She came down with her hair up. The red dress was a dress from her ballet final performance of the year with the Arts Umbrella. In fact Lauren’s princess dress had been an earlier incarnation of such an event and Rebecca may have worn it when she was 7.

Friday, September 24, 2010



Last week at the opening night of Tear the Curtain at the Stanley I ran into Pia Southam (aka Pia Shandel) and she told me she has a new show and is back on air. She hugged me and she told me she appreciated the blog review I wrote about her. I told her that I had been thinking a lot of her deceased husband Harvey Southam with whom I worked (at least 10 years) when he edited his business magazine Equity. I told Shandel one thing, “I remember Harvey’s Buick station wagon. We just bought a Malibu.” Shandel seemed to understand and I did not explain. But let me explain to anybody reading here who might not get the connection

Harvey Southam was the scion of the Southam family which owned newspapers across Canada and through his mother to the MacMillan logging fortune during the era of logging fortunes in British Columbia. Harvey Southam had money and was married to beautiful Pia. They lived in a beautiful house in West Point Gray overlooking the sea. And if that weren’t enough Southam was handsome and personable, and charming, too.

He had the reputation of being hard on the freelance writers that worked for his magazine but in his dealings with this photographer he was kind and he paid me well. In one particular job in which he was the writer we flew to Victoria to interview the then leader of the NDP, Bob Skelly. At the time I owned a large, heavy and cumbersome lighting system called Ascor. I had not only to carry that but my heavy big camera, light stands and tripod. During that whole trip he insisted on carrying that heavy pack for me. He allowed me to be present during the interview (something that he always did and made me feel quite important). After the shoot I decided, on a lark to invite Southam for high tea at the Empress. “Let me able to say, one day that I invited you!” With a smile he consented and we had a great time.

Another time we drove to Whistler to interview Peter Brown. The well-known highfalutin stockbroker and president of Canacord had purchased a restaurant there. We drove in his sort of beat up Mercedes coup vintage late 70s. It was sort of nondescript but handsome enough. Coming back I was nervous as we were navigating the curves on only one headlight. To make it all worse Southam had purchased a large bag of chocolate-covered expresso beans. We were eating them like pop-corn and I could just feel my nerves increasing. We made it all right. A few years later I went with Southam to a meeting that was going to decide who was going to be the chancellor at Simon Fraser. Without him telling me I knew that he was thinking, “We are not going to allow people to vote their choice. We are going to make sure we appoint the man we want.”


Then he purchased that Buick. I told Southam, “Harvey, you could afford a Ferrari, a new Mercedes or something much more interesting than this. Why a Buick?” “Alex, why not a Buick? It’s large and my dog can travel comfortably. Besides with so many Mercedes around I want to start a new trend.”

Rosemary is upset she no longer has her Audi and I am gloriously happy with our Chevrolet Malibu (aka The Rocket). “I wanted something different,” she told me with a sad look on her face.

Here on Athlone street our Malibu is really different. After all it shares the pavement with quite a few Mercedes SUVs, a couple of Jaguars, one Bentley, one Lotus, several Lexus, and a few BWMs. I suspect that Harvey Southam would approve.

Thursday, September 23, 2010







Subject:

Wednesday, September 22, 2010


There are some elements about photography that are hard to teach particularly when I realize it took me a long time to find out about them. I now question if these elements are innate, or are absorbed through trial an error.


A case in point are the five photographs I took for the Georgia Straight this last week for their Fall Arts Preview. I have worked on this perennial assignment for some years. Every year it has become a tad more difficult because of the Straight’s plunging budget for photography even when you take into account that many of the pictures they use are what we call handouts.



Handouts are pictures that are provided by the arts organizations. As an example if actress Lois Anderson is going to be written about, the art department of the Straight might call the theatre company of the play that Anderson is in and ask them to send a photo. This is cheap and does represent savings for the paper. At one time there would have been courier costs. Now those pictures are email. Other modern organizations like the Arts Club Theatre will have a media FTP site where arts newspapers are able to select and download high res photo files of the directors, actors and playwrights. These pictures (as well as many of the dance ones) are usually taken by the extremely competent photographer David Cooper. The only problem is that his excellent pictures will appear in various publications. They will look pristinely, the same.

At one time when the Vancouver Sun and the Georgia Straight had nicer budgets, they competed for exclusivity (and I profited by it handsomely!). The cover of the Straight featuring a Vancouver Opera premiere would be either a picture taken by assignment (in many cases that was me) or the Straight arts editor would politely ask the Vancouver Opera publicist that the picture that would be provided would not be used by any other media organization.



That situation is now history. One of the best ways to find out if a paper’s photo is an assigned original is to look for a photo credit. When it does not have one, that usually means that the picture was provided by the artist or the organization representing the artist, actor, dancer, etc.

At one time the Fall Arts Preview cover for the Straight would have been one of my pictures. Some years ago they started assigning the cover to someone else and this year they simply purchased from a stock agency a picture of a half violin.



With that out of the way as background let me go further into the process of the taking of the fall arts photographs which are now for music, theatre, comedy, visual art and dance. The comedy one is a recent one. Some years ago these would be photographed individually. I would photograph a male dancer and then a female dancer, a male actor, a female actor and so on.

I may have cut my own throat some years ago when I was asked to photograph pianist Ian Parker as the musician and Ballet BC dancer Edmond Kilpatrick. I came up with the idea of taking two pictures but with both the pianist and the dancer in the picture. The difference would lie in that the person making eye contact with me would be the person featured. This idea was used for a few years after until budget dictated that there was only budged for one music picture, one theatre picture and so on. This meant as it meant this year that I might have to photograph two dancers who have absolutely nothing in common except that they are dancers. I have to throw them together and make the most of it.



Three years ago was the last year I used a theme in a picture. In that year the art director suggested that my subjects bring something red of their choice. The theme was red. Last year there was no theme and the theme, by default became my particular style of using a gray background, one light and shooting tight.

I let go of my studio last year so when the Janet Smith, the arts editor of the Straight emailed me to ask me if I wanted to tackle the job I was pleasantly surprised. The over the hill situation was postponed for a while. She asked me what the theme would be.

This idea of a theme has increasingly become more impossible because the writers who do the profiles do not hand in copy until the last moment. In years back I would have been sent the rough pieces or, in some cases the finished essays, a few weeks before the Straight’s deadline. This is no longer in effect. This means I am given names, phone numbers and emails and no more. With the visual artists their names were emailed a mere half week before my picture deadline.

Of the five setups the toughest was the music one. It featured the young pianist Evan Yu and the avant-garde composer and performer Andrea Young. They had nothing in common. In fact Andrea Young told me the piano was not an instrument in the repertory of what she does. If I were to feature both with my home Chickering baby grand he would be the pianist and she would be seen as the singer, the page turner, etc. In the end I opted for a pose in which the piano represents music and nothing more.

The actors Aslam Husain (left in picture) and Amitai Marmostein almost became as tough as the musicians. This is because they were the first and the first that I photographed in my “new” home studio in my living room. The actors did not remember it they had met before and I had next to no info on them. They came to my house as cold call salesmen. What makes actors easy to photograph is that they can act! They are able to show emotions. I enquired about the possibility of using my Pancho el Esqueleto (the Mexican skeleton). The actors agreed. Everything looked pretty good in my iPhone test picture (I use the iPhone to show my subjects the idea but then I use a big camera with film). But I thought that Aslam Husain might look better without his shirt and wearing the black T that he was wearing underneath. I took another iPhone test and I was given the green light.

The dancers were tough because I knew nothing about the new Italian dancer for Ballet BC, Dario Danuzzi. As a classically trained ballet dancer he had little in common with the modern dancer and choreographer Jane Osborne. Osborne and I waited at the Vancouver Dance Centre lounge (they have a nice neutral gray wall there) for Danuzzi to finish his practice. He emerged sweaty and looked just great. But he went and took a shower and returned wearing a hoody. I did not know what to do. The worse part of all is that Danuzzi has the most wonderful, large black eyes (puppy eyes) but I eliminated him looking straight at the camera and opted for the pose you see here. Danuzzi was not especially keen on my idea but I insisted.

The visual artists, Judy Jheung and Erica Stocking) also had nothing in common. In all cases here I suggested to my subjects that they email back and forth to get to know each other before they posed for me. Few did except to check for schedules of mutual availability. The visual artists showed up with nothing of their work that could be incorporated into my photo. I decided then to go for a tight portrait.

The comics where not easy either. They ignored my emails for setting up a time to take the picture. They ignored me until I told them that if I did not take their picture I would not get paid for it. I was a freelancer and not a Straight staffer. Janet Smith helped by stating that no picture meant no article.

Someday soon one of our local arts publications might feature an article about the importance of publicists in arts organizations. In my years in Vancouver (since 1975) I have worked with a gamut of publicists. The worst have been the feature or TV film publicists. It was either my friend Les Wiseman or John Lekich (or both!) who once told me, the purpose of a film publicist is to prevent access to the star. The rock and roll publicists had the extra problem of having to act with divas. Pity the poor publicist who had to represent the Police!

There are intrusive publicists and there are publicists that are almost invisible. For me the best publicist in Vancouver (and alas he has been promoted to marketing) was the Vancouver Opera’s Doug Tuck. He was efficient, learned, witty, helpful, and in short a Boy Scout.

Many of the struggling arts organizations are not able to pay good salaries to good publicists so these publicists that they hire do not last long and new ones have to be found and trained. Some of these publicists are not able to push (gently) their diva-like clients who will then refuse to pose for this photographer (a subsequent loss of revenue) and a standard handout will be sent instead.

The comics brought a publicist ripe out of representing big recording firms. These publicists have to push their weight around. It is the nature of their business. The comic publicist pushed weight around in my living room and I had to sit and take it because I know that as a photographer I represent the newspaper that hires me. And I if lose my temper there is that possible loss of revenue.

I have always felt that comics are funny at their most serious. I wanted to play on the fact that one of them was extremely tall. This was nixed. What you see here is the compromise. The gestures are not my idea. Of all the pictures this one is my least favourite.

In the end I had to admit to the Straight’s editor, Charlie Smith that these assignments are tough and thus lots of fun because of the challenge.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010


I like consulting my on line Real Academia Española dictionary because in short sentences the definitions therein seem to distill the meaning of a word to its essence. An example is the RAE’s definition for rutina:

rutina.
(Del fr. routine, de route, ruta).
1. f. Costumbre inveterada, hábito adquirido de hacer las cosas por mera práctica y sin razonarlas.


The Word comes from the French and its root is way or route. Rutina is an inveterate custom or habit that is acquired in doing things as mere practice and without reasoning them.

I like that “without reasoning”.



On a lark yesterday after our quick lunch of croissants with Black Forest ham and sliced Campari tomatoes I suggested to the girls that we go to VanDusen for a walk. I think that most would agree with me that a 13-year-old itching to Facebook and a 8-year old wanting to play with her dolls or with Rosemary’s cat Casa would not be too keen. But keen they were and we went for a beautiful fall walk in a garden that was mostly empty. I had taken my Mamiya with a couple of lenses , a tripod, so here and there where I noticed a low contrast situation I made the girls pose for me. I also took some iPhone pictures that you see here. I am particularly happy with the one that has the maze as a background.



In the past, in the many trips we have made to VanDusen (during most of the seasons) the girls have looked as the maze with excitement. But when Lauren was around 6 she suddenly disliked going in there. She was afraid of being lost. Rebecca and I were most unkind as we repeated, over and over of her fear to “to get lost in the maze”, “Lauren is a baby. Lauren is a baby.”



Yesterday with a big smile on her face, Lauren wanted to navigate the maze with me and she held her hand out to me. We went in and got ourselves lost, in some places, but we managed to get to the centre where a monkey puzzle (Araucaria araucana) grows. Lauren was delighted. From there we managed to find our way out.

These pleasant Mondays were I pick up Lauren at her school and then we drive up Oak and wait for Rebecca to get off her trolley are days of delight which both Rosemary and I know will not go on forever. Before we know it, and even before Rebecca graduates from high school she will have some school function or sport to make her unwilling to spend Monday afternoons with us. But until that happens this pleasant rutina with the two of them, is a routine that I will savour. In the last picture, coincidentally (the name of the sculpture by Zimbabwean sculptor Dominic Benhura is "My New Dress") Lauren is wearing a new dress bought for her by her Nana (her other grandmother, Marjorie Stewart) at H&M with money that was sent to her by Lauren's Aunt Caroline who lives in Toronto.



Routine

Routine Redux

The Sequential Violinist

Monday, September 20, 2010


I picked up Rebecca this morning at 8:10 and drove her to school. The purpose was to give her more time to get ready for today’s school picture. It seems that 13-year-olds have to get up early to wash their hair and apply their makeup.

When I was 13 I was going to El Colegio Americano in Tacubaya which was an old working-class area of Mexico City. At the time we were living in the spiffy Lomas de Chapultepec. The school had a bright orange bus that picked us up. Riding this bus was a built-in school of geography. Lomas de Chapultepec had streets named after mountains and mountain ranges. I lived on Sierra Madre. The bus would navigate past Sierra Nevada, Monte Altai, Monte Aconcagua or the strangely named Sierra Ventana. Once we had finished with the mountains and peaks we headed to a woody area that lay in between Las Lomas and Tacubaya. This took us through the old Panteón Dolores with its crumbling moss-covered walls. I could spy the crosses of the larger monuments jutting out past the level of the high wall. I had this curiosity and strange attraction for the place. I vowed that one day I would explore (I never did) this cemetery where many of Mexico’s heroes (Pancho Villa is officially supposed to be buried here), writers and poets lie. I believe that it was on this bus that I first realized that one day I would face an inevitable death. It was spooky and exhilarating at the same time.

I picked up Rebecca. As she left her house she headed in the wrong direction. She is still not used to the fact that metallic beige Sophie has been replaced by the silver (and temporarily until Rosemary finds a name) The Rocket. “Why don’t we call her The Rocket?” “Rebecca we have to wait for Rosemary to warm up to her. She will know what to call her.”

When we arrived at her school, Rebecca posed with The Rocket and I remembered how much more interesting my trips to school were. But then I did not have my grandfather driving me. No mountains, no cemetery, perhaps something else will be embedded in her memory.

Pancho Villa

Sunday, September 19, 2010


I must confess that while I have read hundreds of mysteries in my time I have mostly avoided Agatha Christie. From my father I learned to be a snob. Everybody read Agatha Christie but few, as my father did, read Leslie Charteris. In all I may have read two Agatha Christies and my knowledge of the woman and her novels come from the superficially bumbling Miss Marple played by Margaret Rutherford. I had been frozen cold by Miss Marple played by the steely frigid Joan Hickson and I simply stopped bothering on any series that had to do with Miss Marple.



It wasn’t until today that I discovered (courtesy of the Vancouver Public Library, Oakridge Branch) the more intelligent, quiet and believable Miss Marpole as played by Geraldine McEwan in By The Pricking of My Thumbs. But then she wasn’t the star of the show as she had to share the limelight with the detective duo of Tommy and Tuppence (aka Thomas Beresford and Prudence Cowley).



And here is the clincher; Tommy is played by a dapper Anthony Andrews who seems to be a spook in MI6. Anthony Andrews is a delight to watch. But it is his wife that made me sit up and notice. She is played by Greta Scacchi. In this 2006 Granada Series of Marple (with Claire Bloom!), Scacchi plays a delicious (in spite of the 40s period clothing there is cleavage here and there and nice bit of leg and rump), semi-abandoned wife who is resorting to drink for escape. When murder becomes afoot she almost (not quite) forgets the booze.



It is here that I must confess that up until today I could have asserted as a fact that only Charlotte Rampling or Molly Parker would make me waver in my affections for Rosemary. I must now add Greta Scacchi. I have seen her in enough films including the recent Red Violin and in White Mischief (Oh, my!) with Charles Dance (also in today’s Marple, By the Pricking of My Thumbs), Geraldine Chaplin, John Hurt and my ever favourite Graham Greenian, Trevor Howard. But it wasn't until today that her SA (as we used to call it back when I was 9 or 10) hit me hard in my innards.



As I watched her performance I realized that at my age of 68, while my plumbing is most certainly suspect, it seemed to be working just fine. As I watched her I realized that at age 46 (she was born in 1960) she must be one of the few women that can give Charlotte Rampling a run for her money as the sexiest-older-woman-on-earth. And Scacchi has nothing to be jealous of Rampling in the acting department!



I might have watched an early Greta Scacchi and my spring garden would have been a good foil for her. A summer garden would have been just fine with Scacchi in some slightly older roles. But today’s role as Tuppence was perfect for me especially when I decided to visit my fall garden in the light drizzle.



Sometimes at my age (68) I feel I have seen enough and boredom is around the corner. Thanks to Tuppence, as played by Greta Scacchi, I must now assert that even though I don’t drink and I am faithful to my Rosemary, I would have gladly gotten sloshed with Tuppence and I would have ravished her behind the gazebo in today's fall garden.