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| Sarah Rodgers & Allan Morgan - July 2006 |
On any given day in the rose season (now until fall) if you ask me what is my favourite one I most probably tell you it’s one that is in bloom. The question is harder to answer in the dark of winter.
Perhaps the same reason applies to the question, “Alex which
is the most favourite photograph you have ever taken?” My answer often is, “It
depends. You mean a portrait, a nude, a landscape, a plant scan, etc?”
While attempting to put some order into my computer’s photo
files I found this Polaroid. I knew of it and I have often run into it. A b+w
film version ran in a Georgia Straight review sometime in July 2006 for the
play Angels in America. I was assigned to photograph two of the actors (it was
a four actor play, all excruciatingly excellent), Allan Morgan and Sarah
Rodgers. The latter who played the angel and on stage wore large angel wings
while hanging by ropes suggested she bring the wings to the studio session.
I have a verboten attitude to photographs of women by
motorcycles, cars, on railroad tracks and old steam heating registers. And all
of those much worse if the woman is wearing angel wings.
Being a minimalist at heart I instructed Rodgers to bring
one white feather.
Allan Morgan played (to perfection) the gay-denying nasty
lawyer Roy Cohn.
The two showed up at my studio. It was one of the easiest
and quickest photograph I have ever taken. I shot a Polaroid (what you see here
is a scan of the peeled part of the Polaroid which is impossible to correct and
remove all the inherent yellow tinge). And after that, 10 exposures on b+w
medium format film. Rodgers, in her personal talent of excellency decided that
if we were to capture a sense of intimacy she was going to pose topless even
though from what you see here nothing would be showing.
Many times in portrait sessions in my studio, for tight
portraits of women, my subjects have opted to wearing pumps. It affects their
posture in a positive manner so they say.
I am most excited that Rodgers and I will be soon
collaboration on new photographs. It is my hope that her hair is redder than
usual.