Saturday, August 04, 2012

My Mother's Red Shawl - El Rebozo Colorado
Kiera Hill - Dancer


As an emerging artist my journey along this career path is just beginning. Many hours training and rehearsal in the studios of Arts Umbrella have tried to prepare me for this moment, the moment when you are no longer considered a student, but a professional dancer. I have just completed the Arts Umbrella/VCC Graduate Program and will be starting my apprenticeship with Ballet BC in the 2011/2012 season. I feel so fortunate that both my school and company of choice ended up in the same city. Artemis Gordon, Director of Arts Umbrella Dance and Emily Molnar, Artistic Director of Ballet BC have been two of my greatest mentors and inspirations over the years and being able to work with both of them is more than I could ever ask for. I am so excited to take this next step, the dancers of Ballet BC are all exceptional artists that I have been looking up to for many years and I hunger for the knowledge and experiences that await me.





Johnna Wright & Sascha Director/Mother - Son/Dreamer
Decker & Nick Hunt Cat & 19th century amateur
George Bowering Poet
Celia Duthie Gallerist
Linda Lorenzo Mother
Katheryn Petersen Accordionist
Stefanie Denz Artist
Ivette Hernández Actress
Byron Chief-Moon Actor/Dancer
Colin Horricks Doctor
Ian Mulgrew Vancouver Sun Columnist
Jocelyn Morlock Composer
Corinne McConchie Librarian
Rachel Ditor Dramaturg
Patrick Reid Statesman, Flag Designer
Michael Varga CBC Cameraman
Bronwen Marsden Playwright/Actress/Director
David Baines Vancouver Sun Columnist
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward Photographer
Lauren Elizabeth Stewart Student
Sandrine Cassini Dancer/Choreographer
Meredith Kalaman Dancer/Choreographer
Juliya Kate Dominatrix

Friday, August 03, 2012

For some of you who may be somewhat regular readers of this blog you must know that I have a project, tentatively called Me&My Project which is based on a lifelong project by German photographer August Sander who photographed people from all the walk of life in Germany for over half a century.

Central to Sander’s portraiture was an almost incredible objective detachment from his subjects so they all seemed to shine with an inner humanity so rare in, in my opinion, in contemporary portraiture. Sander’s portraits ooze with a respect that he must have had for all his subjects.

In my project I add two variations. One is that I use my mother’s red rebozo (shawl) which she brought to Buenos Aires from a trip to Mexico in 1952. For me the rebozo is magical in its redness and rough texture. The other variation is that my subjects must write an essay on anything.

To date I have 23 and ten in the can but with the problem that I must keep nagging my subjects to send in their essays.

There has been an interesting wrinkle. One of my first subjects, Yuliya Kate, the professional dominatrix says I caught her in a day when she had a cold. She insisted on a re-shoot. I was a bit reluctant but she was willing to come to the house for her portrait. I relented so we took the pictures on Wednesday and also took a few more. I have not processed the film but here is the new Fuji Instant Film scan. I must agree that Yuliya looks much better and the photograph is more striking.

Besides, when a dominatrix wants something, we mere mortals must comply. I am glad I did.

Thursday, August 02, 2012

My Mother's Red Shawl - El Rebozo Colorado
Johnna Wright - Director/Mother  -Sascha Surjik-Wright -Son/Dreamer





When I was a kid my mom had a dress, yellow knit with a full, pleated skirt. I remember her walking down the street from the bus stop toward our house, on her way home from work at the Calgary Herald. You could see her from our balcony, walking along in the sunshine. She looked like a daffodil. She had this belt made of metal chain that she wore with that dress. I don’t know what happened to the dress but I have the belt. I’d wear more of her stuff but she was a lot taller and slimmer than I am. Even her jewelry is too big for me. I have some of it anyway, including a ring she bought in Greece shortly before she died. I put adhesive tape around it so it won’t fall off.

When she died in 2001, I took a lot of her stuff. 7 years later I was still wearing her eye shadow, which I guess is a bit strange. I figured then that it was time to let some things go, but in the end I only ditched the makeup.


I always felt, not very originally, that objects weren’t important next to people and relationships. But I underestimated the power of objects to connect you to a person. My son seems to understand it, though. He has my husband’s ??-year-old Tinker Toy set and loves to play with it because that’s what Dad did when he was a boy.

Before I had my son I understood the concept of maternal love, but the people who told me I wouldn’t really know what it meant until I was a mother – they were right. When he was born I looked at him and thought ‘Oh, I get it now. I would die for this person.’ It’s not simple and soft and cuddly the way I used to think of a mother’s love – it’s weirdly more savage than that. It’s elemental. Like, this is my life out there in front of me. There it goes, running down the sidewalk, wobbling on its training wheels, climbing that fence. My whole self and everything I am, in 34 pounds of dirt, and rocks from the driveway, and stolen chocolate sauce.



Decker & Nick Hunt Cat & 19th century amateur
George Bowering Poet
Celia Duthie Gallerist
Linda Lorenzo Mother
Katheryn Petersen Accordionist
Stefanie Denz Artist
Ivette Hernández Actress
Byron Chief-Moon Actor/Dancer
Colin Horricks Doctor
Ian Mulgrew Vancouver Sun Columnist
Jocelyn Morlock Composer
Corinne McConchie Librarian
Rachel Ditor Dramaturg
Patrick Reid Statesman, Flag Designer
Michael Varga CBC Cameraman
Bronwen Marsden Playwright/Actress/Director
David Baines Vancouver Sun Columnist
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward Photographer
Lauren Elizabeth Stewart Student
Sandrine Cassini Dancer/Choreographer
Meredith Kalaman Dancer/Choreographer
Juliya Kate Dominatrix

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Yuliya at the computer Mamiya RB-67 Pro-SD 90mm lens Fuji FP-3000B Instant b+w film August 1, 2012

I have been thinking and writing about this a lot lately. It is about the paradox of discovering old new tech in a world that functions on new tech of the latest (today’s) variety. A few days ago I posted a picture of my granddaughter Lauren  here and because I had the blog linked in facebook many (more than the usual one or two) people commented on how striking or nice it was.

Yuliya at the computer May 2008

I took the picture in a back lit large transparency display at the Vancouver Planetarium. I correctly understood that if I placed Lauren in profile the resulting image possibility was one of relative low contrast. This happens to be the one situation in which my iPhone 3G (and other iPhones, even the better and more advanced ones) excels at.

The image above reversed to become a positive in Photoshop

The image is a result of an iPhone capture. But because it is with the oldest model is it still high tech or yesterday’s technology? I did not use (anathema!) Instagram to improve the picture. Relatively benign tweaking in Photoshop (my version is 8 years old) sharpened it a bit and helped me bring in a bit more shadow detail on Lauren’s face.

Then on another day I will post in my blog (with a link to it in facebook) and nobody will notice the picture even though the level of lighting and old time, but very good old time technology came into the taking. I find this fascinating.

The image above with contrast enhanced

Only in the last three weeks did I find out that the Fuji Instant print colour peels (to call them that as there is no technical name for that part of the Fuji (roid) which you peel away from your instant print) will with a pretty straightforward procedure provide me with a strange but pretty decent negative. In a distant past I used to scan the Polaroid peels with success. The image on the peels was permanent. The image on the Fuji peels fades away in minutes. To scan them you must place them face down (and sticky wet they are) on the bed of my Epson V700 Photos scanner. After that I threw most of the peels away! What a loss in retrospect! Fuji makes a 3000 ISO instant film (FP-3000B) that is a wonder to use with my Mamiya RB. Unfortunately the negative peel cannot be bleached to produce a clear negative. I have tried that.

The image obove cropped

Fortunately! Yes, fortunately the negative image on the peel is permanent. I will walk you here with the transformation of a peel that I took today of my friend the professional dominatrix, Yuliya Kate. She came to my house for a re-shoot of her red shawl series photograph. When I took it she had a cold. Normally I do not do re-shoots of this type. But can one deny a woman who orders you around? No!

I will have the Ektachrome 100G processed tomorrow and I will put up the picture to replace the one here. I do agree with Yuliya, that the second time around pictures (judging from the colour Fuji instant print) is better.

The image above reversed (mirror image) to reflect view I saw in my camera I processed the image with Corel Paint Shop Pro X2 in Time Machine - cyanotype

But with Yuliya here I suggested we reprise one of my favourite pictures of her where she sits full nude by my computer. I love this picture. I asked her to wear something for the picture. At first she resisted doing the picture. “Why do something again?” My answer is that you cannot and that I love the variations that come into play and the undeniable fact that time does not stop. People will look different. What you see here is the transition from the one Fuji Instant b+w 3000 ISO negative peel. I did shoot b+w Kodak Plus-X and Fuji 1600 ISO colour negative film with a pair of Nikon FM-2s but those images will have to wait. Meanwhile there are these. Notice how the negative solarized a bit so that lower part of her body is still a negative. It’s these variations produced by obsolete high technology of the past that excite me to keep taking photographs and not wanting to cruise the malls, watching the news or otherwise wasting my time.

And besides, after taking our pictures Yuliya and I sat in the garden (sunny it was) and we drank very cold Italian  Moscato and did away with half of a very large and very sweet watermelon.

The dominatrix smiled and so did I.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Autochrome circa 1899 by Harry Waterhouse Hayward

I will, for the record state that while I have been inside houses of ill repute a couple of times (in company of the then Judicial Chief of Police of Acapulco) I have never indulged or paid any woman for sex.

But one way or other houses of ill repute have been around for me.

It all began at the end of the 50s when my mother and grandmother rented a second floor apartment on Avenida Insurgentes Sur in Mexico City. The apartment was over a gun shop run by our ex jai-alai player friend Daniel Guridi Árregui and a Lazy-Boy Furniture store. Next to it was an old 30s house that was a show room for lawn furniture.

We were visited by my beautiful first cousin Dolores Humphrey Tow. She and I were into astronomy, or so we convinced my mother and grandmother. We would go up to the roof with my 4 inch reflecting telescope. I had built it from a kit from Edmond Scientific up in Texas where I attended a Catholic boarding school.

Dolores and I quickly lost interest in the moon’s craters and the very small images of the planets. We preferred to point the telescope down (and with the Barlow lens attached to double the magnification) and peek through the windows of the lawn furniture business house which was really a clandestine house of ill repute. But in all the times we looked, whenever action was finally going to happen the curtains would be drawn and we never did see anything.

On early dawn our doorbell rang insistently. My grandmother went down to open the door. A drunken man demanded, “Madam I am here to inspect your girls.” My grandmother instantly caught one and slammed the door on the man’s face. We moved to a better location within the week.

"House of ill repute" - Main Street Vancouver circa 1998 Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

In 1974 before Rosemary, our daughters and I moved up to Vancouver we visited Veracruz where my friend Felipe Ferrer Junco (not yet the chief of police in Acapulco) had a big job as a lawyer with the Mexican Social Security System. Felipe insisted that I could not possibly leave Mexico without first peeking into a house of ill repute. We entered the nondescript place and sat down to drink some cubas. I suddenly noticed a lovely young woman dancing very closely with a man. I looked at Felipe with a question in my eyes. Felipe immediately whispered, “Don’t even look in that direction. Notice that he carries an automatic. He is the chief of police here in Veracruz. He is very violent and very jealous.”

Years later in Acapulco Felipe, now the judicial chief of police of the town took me to the most famous whore house in Mexico, La Huerta before it burned down in the late 80s.

Dolores on the roof, the telescope was stashed in daytime

With visions of these houses I photographed a couple of friends in an apartment on Main Street in the late 90s which I dressed to my idea of what a Mexican house of ill repute looked like in a bedroom.

You must then understand my delight of finding the picture you see here that my grandfather, Harry Waterhouse Hayward took in a trip he made to Mumbai (Bombay then). He worked as an agent for a British shipping firm. After his return from India around 1899 he and his then common-law wife (my grandmother Ellen Carter) and son Harry moved to settle in Buenos Aires.

In my father’s trunk I found this old Autochrome (an early colour process invented by the Lumière Brothers) of what must be certainly a prostitute in Bombay. I find her charming.

My only question is, did Grandfather Harry just take a picture or did he indulge?

Monday, July 30, 2012

Darcy Patko captured with repaired 3G

The contract on my TELUS supported iPhone 3G expires in April 2013. I have learned my lesson and I will not renew it or enter any other contract of any kind. I happen to use my iPhone principally as a phone and sometimes as a camera. As things wind down in the business of magazine photography I do not need instant communication except perhaps a phone with a panic button if the heart shows overtures of giving out.

What this means is that I will not upgrade but will definitely downgrade to an “el cheapo” or as I will explain below, I will keep my not quite state-of-the-art phone as it has an excellent alarm chime that wakes me up in the morning without stressing me out!

The problem with telephone contracts is that you are stuck and if your phone happens to be an Apple product then you are subjected to a double problem where TELUS will tell you to consult with Apple while Apple will tell you it is a TELUS problem.

My phone would not charge. The last time it did this I bought a new outlet connection. This time around I went to the Apple Store in Oakridge. You cannot enter without consulting one of their geniuses. This particular genius was new as he had to repeatedly consult another of his kind. We finally put the phone on a desk charger. It was not charging. It was not the cord. It had to be the inside connection.

The solution, I was told was one with two options. The phone could be repaired for about $175 (if it could be repaired I was warned) or I could by a brand new 3G (no mention of an upgrade at all) for $375. I simply call that the Apple Blackmail.

This had to be a job for the Robin Hood of iPhone repairs, Darcy Patko. I called him up and left a message on his machine telling him of the problem. He called me back and we made an appointment for 3 in the afternoon at the Cambie at Broadway Starbucks.

I was drinking a wonderful tall whipped cream macchiato when I spotted my friendly Robin Hood with his portable repair kit (an airline size wheeled carry on). He was wearing his trademark hat.



Patko sat down and opened his kit. The tools where arranged in an orderly fashion. Patko explained that Apple makes nothing. All parts are made in China. If stuff is made in China, extra parts (brand new ones) can be purchased by anybody. I noticed that my iPhone was mostly modular. Patko removed the corroded old one and slipped a new one. Five minutes later and only $50.00 poorer I was calling Rosemary to tell her the phone was fixed

Patko can be found here. Or phone 604-700-6049

If you look closely at the bottom of the picture you might note an iPhone 4 with a wood back. Patko has a brand new company that sells kits (only a screwdriver is needed) to replace the not shatter proof glass back with a made in Canada (yes!) wooden back.  Lumberback

Take that you geniuses! And going back home my day presented me with another pleasant surprise.

Sunday, July 29, 2012


While I eschew most forms of high technology I choose to use the particular ones that serve my purpose. While by most standards my Epson V-700 Photo scanner is somewhat obsolete I can do wonderful things with it in conjunction with film (prints, negatives and transparencies).

My Nikon FM-2 camera (I have three) is yesterday’s high technology but its sophisticated titanium focal plane shutter is still a marvel. It keeps working without any need of repair or fine tuning even though I have had them for at least 20 years.

I am particularly interested in the trends of high technology as viewed by what we call social media. I have both a facebook and a Twitter account (@alexwh). In order to understand youth (and in particular my soon-to be-15-year-old teen age granddaughter from hell) I study how people use social media and how it seems to affect how they communicate, how often they communicate and what medium they use to communicate, or not.



For starters, at least 70% of my incoming emails are from Expedia, Air Miles, Costco, Abe Books, Telus, Kit Cat Clocks, Dueck Motors, and whatever company I have purchased something from and needed ( not given the choice) to part with my email address.

Fewer of my friends send me emails. Most don’t call on the phone and if I happen to leave a message in their answering machine these messages are not returned. I think I may have the communications version of under arm odor.

Even the usual “I like your pic” or facebook “like” is fading. Facebook seems to be in decline. In order to communicate with my friend Tim Bray who works a Google Android or with my new friend writer  J.J. Lee the form that will have a quick return is through Twitter.



Sometimes Facebook is the only efficient mode of instant communication. Last year I wanted to send a message to Max Reimer, then Artistic Director of the Vancouver Playhouse. The Playhouse web page was not user friendly and communication with its Artistic Director was either verboten or simply not listed anywhere. I found Reimer on facebook. I sent my message and got my quick reply. The phone book (the on-line white pages were useless).

Of late I have noticed that in facebook people are sending what looks like a form box where they ask you, “Do you still want to be my friend?” You are given three choices. These started popping up here and there and then suddenly they were like a phalanx of Greek Hoplites.

Then there are the boxes with aphorisms that have replaced the “word of the day” from a recent past. "It is better to have loved and lost than..." Hogwash!




The nostalgia photos (perhaps an avocado-coloured electric hand beater) that ask, "Do you know what this is?"  "And if you do, like", are creeping up in popularity. Ugh!

 What really pushes me off the cliff is the square photo that underneath is followed by the statement  via Instagram. More legions (not even Greek Hoplites) of people are taking pictures with their phones and "improving"  them with Instagram. One salient feature of the Instagram process is the squaring off of all images. I have yet to see rectangular Instagram. Instagram comes will all sort of apps that mimic photographic effects from the past. In some cases these photographic effects preceded the birth of the users. How many remember where crazy borders came from?

Seen here reduction ad absurdum is an image that I took this year of my splendid model friend Bronwen Marsden and her then paramour Michael Unger. I have converted the picture (which I took with that Nikon FM-2 loaded with President’s Choice – No-Name 800 ISO colour negative film) to resemble an Instagram but a rectangular one! I first added a vignette with Corel Paint Shop Pro X2, and then I used Corel’s Time Machine to give it the Cross Process effect (crazy off-colours) and a border.




Then I did the same thing but first cropping my picture to a square. I rest my case in which anybody who reads this can decide which is the better picture.

And below is the body of a previous blog in which I wrote of the merits of not shooting square pictures.



The Perfect Square
Monday, February 06, 2012


Whatever success I ever obtained for shooting for magazines came when in the late 70s I opted to buy what was then a new fangled camera, the RB-67 with a 6x7 cm format and the innovative revolving back (from vertical to horizontal). I remember an art director, Rick Staehling who called me one day and told me he had an assignment for me in which he stipulated that I use that big camera I had showed him.

During the many years that I shot for magazines my photographs were rarely cropped. One of the reasons is that the revolving back “forced” me to look at everything as both (not either) a horizontal and vertical interpretation. I had received assignments for vertical full page (bleed is the term) photos but when the art director would see a horizontal version he would sometimes convert it into a two-page spread and force the editor to reduce the poor writer’s copy!

For me the square format is the ambivalent format of a person not willing to make a commitment. This person can make the choice later (sort of like exposing in digital RAW). Except for those who shot for record albums (not much of an art now as the soon-to-disappear CDs and their covers were and are much too small for any detail to be important) life is not square.

If you look around with care you might find that the Greeks were aware that a square was a static shape and that life was really never square. So they invented the perfect square which was ever so slightly taller than wide. The Greeks without being sure of the existence of gravity somehow corrected what we would now call visual gravity and made their square taller so that we could flatten it with our imagination.

For me the square in either film or digital format is a shape that does not lend itself to a creativity of the magazine kind. Books and magazines are all rectangles.

It was, paradoxically, the advent of the first Apple computers in the 80s which were quickly adopted by forward thinking art directors and magazine designers that changed everything for a while. In an era where photographs were pasted on with wax on magazine facsimiles the computer liberated these art directors from the problem of designing pages for vertical or horizontal art. They started assigning photographers and illustrators to shoot and draw squares. Issues could be designed with months in advance to suit anything provided. That’s when magazines (for a while) forgot that one big picture usually trumped many small ones. Magazines in those days were littered with little square pictures and art directors ignored the intentions of photographers and illustrators and designed pages, flipping and moving images around in their Apples.