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| Julie Menard |
I may have been around 1982 when I first met Julie Menard. I
called her the watch lady. In her profession she divested herself of everything
within minutes of her performance. But she always kept her Cartier watch.
Menard reminded me of a sophisticated version of Susan Sarandon. Menard’s skin
looked like the coating on white Limoges china. She had a liking for red
lipstick that set off her unsaturated skin. Her choice of music, too, was
sophisticated. It was always obscure new wave that had to go with her sinuous,
slippery sort of dancing.
She was an ice queen, more so because of the contrast between
her stark white skin and her Revlon red lipstick. Her English was just about
perfect but there was just enough French in it to make her that much more
interesting.
There was a streak of existentialist sadness in her
demeanor. But I was told she was tough. She had a little daughter and she did
her best for her. One day I asked if she would pose for me. I remember that she
lived right next to Grandview Park on Commercial Drive not far from where I was
to photograph Dave Barrett by his Volvo a few years later. I picked her up in
my yellow Fiat X 1/9 and we drove to Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver. We
walked to the cliffs where I took the pictures on a hot sunny afternoon in
summer.
I note that I used four film stocks. With my Pentaxes I
loaded one with Kodak b+w infrared and the other with Kodak Technical Pan. With
my Mamiya RB-67 I used Kodacolor in 120 and a Fuji HR- 100. The latter really
shows off Menard’s white skin but unfortunately the negative has stained in
places and you might note that there is some yellow in her white slip.
Shortly after I took the pictures she told me she was going
back to Montreal and I never saw her again.
