Viktoria Langton - Mamiya RB-67 Pro S

When things were simpler my Rosemary and my two daughters Ale and Hilary lived on Springer Avenue in Burnaby.  The strata title home had a very large basement. One room was my darkroom that had a separate bathroom. This was a change from my previous Mexico City darkroom which was a bathroom. The other room in our Burnaby basement was my low ceiling garage turned into my studio.

In the living room I had hanging from a corner a lovely Mexican made wicker Swedish egg. The egg came with us from Mexico in 1975. For some shoots I would move the egg to the basement and I had a hook in the ceiling to hang it from.

Here I wrote about my mother’s and my Rosemary’s exquisite legs. But there was one more woman with privileged legs that I photograph many times at the CBC in the late 70s. She was, Viktoria Langton, a jazz dancer, part of the troupe that was featured in the many CBC variety shows of the time. Her legs were astounding. They were muscular, but not too much to hide how shapely they were. To top it all she was an amazing dancer.

Somehow we connected so that I could photograph her in her home and then in my studio. As you can see she also posed in the Swedish egg.

Pentax Spotmatic-F

The egg is in my mind as we are soon moving to a smaller duplex. The Swedish egg was in my current shop room since we moved in 1986. I have vowed to see it in the light of day in our new home hanging from a corner of the living room.

I have been unable to convince the crop of photographers who specialize in only using a digital camera at the merits of using more than one camera at the time of a session. The act of putting down one camera and picking up another can sometimes (and that is the case for me) inject something that I cannot pin down but which I like. The idea that one RAW digital exposure can be made into b+w, colour, low contrast, high contrast does not convince me as that multi-varied exposure is still only one.

Consider that here you have two pictures. In one I used my medium format Mamiya RB-67 Pro-S with Ilford Pan F film. The other I shot with a Pentax Spotmatic-F loaded with Kodak Technical Pan Film. They are similar but different, too. At the time (circa 1978) I had yet to buy my first softbox. For these pictures I used a medium sized white umbrella.