She got her first guitar when she was 15 and wrote her first song not long after. By the time she was 22, she’d abandoned plans to go to university and become a teacher. Instead, she left home to pursue a musical career, leaving her mother crying in the driveway.

Chris Dafoe – The Globe and Mail – Saturday November 19 1994 

Perhaps this blog has no particular Christmas theme if one at all. And yet this woman's (Jann Arden),  badly spotted and streaked 8x10 glossy (one that went from Vancouver to the Globe and Mail's photo desk in Toronto and back has languished (beautifully) in my files until tonight December 22, 2017. 

It looks the way it does because in those years Ilford made a paper that was on a plastic base. It was easy to print and it produced beautiful jet blacks. But the paper (Ilfospeed) was unstable and even if not displayed to light but stored inside my metal files, sometimes it would develop these nice (to my eyes) colours.

It was tonight that I read in Facebook (I landed in Jann Arden's page by accident) her account of looking at herself in the mirror. It is honest, beautiful and wonderful. It has over 1000 comments. 

When I read it I felt uplifted. If anything this makes this a most adequate Christmas blog!

Yesterday afternoon Rosemary and I went to the  Fifth Avenue Cinemas to see The Darkest Hour featuring Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, Kristen Scott Thomas as Clemmie (Scott Thomas resembles Daniel Day-Lewis more every time I see her) and Ronald Pickup as Neville Chamberlain (and Pickup is the spitting image of my father).

Of special note for me was the performance of Ben Mendelsohn as King George VI. Both Rosemary and I thought he was superb. His so-called speech impediment was understated. At the end he had us all fooled and almost out of character for a king utters the word "bugger".

The film has three elements of directorial innovation that I enjoyed. There are two London street scenes in which the camera pans to the right with the people moving in slow motion. Another has the camera looking down (first in House of Commons in Parliament and then in a war zone in Calais, and another on London itself until the persons or person seen in big becomes a dot on the screen.

The other involves Hannah Steele playing Churchill’s stenographer and later his virtual assistant. Churchill dictates his speeches in bed, from the bathroom, etc and when he does make the speeches sometimes the scenes cut from the typewriter to the location of the speech. In other situations Steele can be seen silently mouthing the speech as she listens.

And of course the film ends with Churchill’s rousing speech This was their finest hour:

"This was their finest hour" is the title commonly attributed to a speech delivered by Winston Churchill to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom on 18 June 1940.

Wikipedia

For me this speech has a particular place in my mind and heart. It was in the late 80s that I had the good fortune to photograph actor Rod Steiger in his hotel room here in Vancouver.

I knocked on the door and a man, unshaven and wearing a black hat let me in and asked me if I wanted to have lunch with him in the room. This involved large amounts of white wine.

I was in my glory as I truly admired the man and particular for the Sydney Lumet 1964 film The Pawnbroker and the 1970 film Waterloo where he played Napoleon. And who can ever forget the Dentyne Chewing Gum (cinnamon flavour so Steiger told me) chewing sheriff in the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night?

Steiger told me that to prepare for his Napoleon he even read French and English newspapers of the day. He also, with a heavy regret, told me that the one part that eluded him was that of playing Churchill.

And then without missing a beat he recited the whole This was their finest hour speech.

And there I was incredulous but feeling blessed with my glass of white wine.

Christmas, once you have purchased all the gifts and put up the Christmas tree (and we have done it) is when time stops. It is an interval for reflection.

For me 2017 was the year when I finally cut off myself (or was cut off) from all my possible photographic jobs. It is the year when it finally sunk in that I am (there is a bit of dark humour in this) obsolete – redundant & retired.

It was the year when I stopped making lists of all the stuff that once existed that is now long gone, including that early list of Studebakers, Edixas, Packards, Minoltas, Borgwards, Ricohs, Oldsmobile Achievas, Ektachrome, black dial telephones, travel agencies, journalists, editors, Pontiacs, Saturday Night, more than one big box bookstore, Sony Stores, Kodachrome,Duthies, cathode ray tube monitors to replace the one I have  when it finally calls it quits, my darkroom, our Athlone garden, our 2007 Malibu, my granddaughters as children, etc.

One bright spot is the fact that I am invited to the Georgia Straight Christmas party even though I no longer do any work for them. I went to the party this year and ran into about 10 people I knew of which only four were people I had worked with. Astoundingly what now seems to be a pleasant occasion is that I sit down to chat with Straight owner Dan McLeod who is particularly nice to me and even manages to converse in various monosyllables! Who would have known?

In this contemplative time I reconsider what I can do with the time I have left in collaboration with my many cameras and my now refurbished and dedicated (only a camera) iPhone3G.

Will I go out and shoot sunsets, cityscapes, fireworks, street photography, document fire plugs and telephone posts, take more than two pictures of my cat Casi-Casi per year, and photograph (and not scan) my roses?

No!

Will I pursue my interest in exploring my now more subtle (because I am an old man) look into what I think is erotic?

 Yes!

I will have to be careful as in trying to recruit possible candidates for this onerous task in this 2017 might be seen as harassment if I am too pushy.

As an example, and I rest my case, the accompanying photograph of this blog is one of Lisa Prentiss with that cliché that is the venetian blind reflection on the human body. I hope that in this coming 2018 I am able to snap many more like this one.

For anybody who might have a question about the photograph herein, it is exactly how I saw it through my viewfinder (Nikon FM-2) and I did not crop it.

 For me Christmas was always about children. In the beginning the child was me. Then our daughters made the festivity relevant. Our two granddaughters Lauren, 15, and Rebecca, 20 are no longer children.

We cannot buy them cute dresses and nice shoes. Now they want makeup. Imagine this idiot going to Shopper’s to find stuff for them! We are now in that unimaginative and sterile gift certificate period. 

What surprises can be in store for us after Christmas dinner on Nochebuena?

Personally I want nothing. I have my new Fuji X-E3 and a refurbished and dedicated (only a camera) iPhone3G.

Food has lost a lot for me as my taste buds (not my sense of smell!) are not sensitive unless I load whatever I am eating with Yucatecan habanero (very green! )sauce.

Rosemary has every article of clothing and shoes she needs. If anything we are donating to Big Brothers almost every week. We are divesting ourselves of stuff.

My yearly (and very exciting) trips to 25% off hardcover days at Indigo on Granville and West Broadway are over. I am reading the latest Donna Leon and Andrea Camilleri courtesy of the VPL

What is left?

For sure I have my memories of Christmas past and all the ghosts are pleasant ones.

As a young boy in Buenos Aires I was no different from others. We all loved American stuff even though we liked to paint on walls “¡Fuera yanquis! In fact there was a huge ad in the central train station of Retiro that had this, “Cemento Portland USA”.

My memories of those Christmases involved going to see American “conboy” films. My fave ever was the 1950 film Colt .45 with Randolph Scott.

Every time I had an excuse to go to the Coghlan train station on our way to town with my mother I would scan the newsstands for Llanero Solitario (The Lone Ranger) comic books. I did not like Roy Rodgers too much I preferred Hopalong Cassidy and Gene Autrey. In fact I had a Gene Autrey cap pistol I was very proud of.

These memories of my past (pleasant they are) are more so when I look at this strip (ha! Ha!) of Lisa Prentiss wearing a Llanero Solitario mask.

Bang! Bang!

Ever since we moved to Vancouver from Mexico City in 1975 we have handled snow with an ignorant precaution. In most cases we have opted to leave the car at home and take transit.

For some years we had Audi A-4s with all-wheel drive and we felt safe driving them during snow storms. The cars had all-weather tires. But there were slipping problems here and there.

This year with the idea that our 2017 Chevrolet Cruze is the last car I will ever buy and drive, I thought it was a good time to buy real snow tires. This I did at Dueck’s. They are charging me $80 to store the summer tires.

Today I have to pick up our granddaughter Lauren, 15, at her Arts Umbrella Dance class on Granville Island. If today’s snow stays I am kind of excited at the prospect of seeing how our Cruze navigates the snow.

What we are never told is that snow tires are extra good for wet roads. I have noticed how precise the Cruze is at stopping in rainy weather.

We woke up to today’s early snow fall and I looked out of the window. One of the few plants we kept from this house we purchased a bit more than a year ago is the Pyracantha coccinea. Notice the beautiful red berries outside my oficina and studio. To the right of the door I placed a bird feeder. I also put seeds in the pot hanging from the left of the door. Our garden is full of birds that take turns at munching the seeds.

My Rosemary smiles and that presages, perhaps a merry Christmas.