Sometime around 1988 my Rosemary took me to a meeting of
the Vancouver Rose Society at the VanDusen Botanical Garden’s Floral Hall. We sat in hard chairs and
listened to boring minutes of the previous meeting. We then saw 100 bad slides
of close-ups of roses taken in harsh contrasty sunlight. I looked my Rosemary
and said, “You brought me to this?”
If you now jump to 2017 as a photographer I might be invited
(I will prepare my excuses so I can say, “No.”) to a show of digital images
projected with a digital projector.
The theme of the show might be city landscapes during the
day or at night. There would be many sunsets and pictures of fireworks. Some of
those landscapes might be narrow horizontal views of a dramatic sky and the
same upside down on a pristine lake. There would be oohs and aahs.
My point is that after 100 of those even comfortable chairs
might seem hard.
On the other hand I could see 100 profiles of women and clamour
for more.
This is a profile of my Ukrainian friend Y. There is
something of her face in which I see (my opinion only) a person from a country
without mountains that has been ravaged by the back and forth trampling of
armies of Mongols, Chinese, Germans and Russians. This may be the reason why
part of her beauty is a universal visage of patient suffering.