That Egg Chair
Thursday, May 08, 2014
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| Rosemary and the egg chair, Arboledas 1974 |
The egg chair lies forlorn in our basement.
I haven’t been able to find a place for it since we moved from our house in Burnaby in 1986. We
originally had it in our Arboledas, Estado de México home. Ceilings in our house there were of concrete so you could
hang it anywhere if you had a proper drill.
Our present home has
vaulted ceilings and I never had the gumption to poke a hole to find some beam
I could hang the chair from.
In Burnaby sometime around 1979 or 1989 I
photographed one of the most elegant women I have ever met. She was a jazz
dancer who appeared in most of the variety shows that were so popular at the
time at our local CBC. I think I first met her for my first show as a stills
man, the Wolfman Jack Show. ViktoriaLangton had legs that rivaled my mother’s and a face with cheekbones that
resembled a Cinemascope screen. Add to that a distinguished South African
accent and you had real glamour.
When I photographed
her in my low ceiling Burnaby
basement (the garage) I screwed a hook to the ceiling and hung the egg chair.
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| Alexandra, 7. the egg chair was on the right of frame |
One of the reasons for
today’s blog besides showing you the egg chair (which I painted with white automobile
lacquer) is that I find it interesting to see the development of my portrait
technique. In both these pictures I was not good with Langton’s hands. After
repeated criticism from my Rosemary through the years, I would never show an
ungraceful hand or crop out fingers.
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| Viktoria Langton, 1979, Pentax Spotmatic-F |
What I do notice is a
consistency of approach. I don’t like to put all my photographic eggs in one
basket. It was anathema in my years as a magazine photographer to return to the
assigning art director and say, “I did not load my camera properly,” or “The
flash sync was off,” or I forgot to load my camera with film,” and the many
other tricks of the trade that often conspired to prevent me from taking one useable
image. Early on I learned to have backup equipment handy. And, very important I
would use more than one camera.
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| Mamiya RB-67 |
In one of the
photographs here I used a Mamiya RB-67 with a 65mm wide angle lens (the only
lens I had for that camera at that time) loaded with a very fine grain b+w
film, Ilford Pan F which I believe I rated at 50 ISO. For the second shot I
used a Pentax Spotmatic F, a 35mm lens and Kodak Technical Pan which I also
rated at 50 ISO.
More now than ever, I
like the multiple camera approach. A digital camera may provide you with b+w,
colour, low contrast and high contrast on the same picture, but these
variations will still be from only one photograph. Here you see two similar
photographs that I believe are substantially different.
And as I look at the early pictures of our egg chair in Arboledas I can remember sitting in it and listening to Carole King, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Rod Stewart and Gerry Mulligan. Now minus that egg chair I still listen to Gerry Mulligan.
