A Blast With Photographer Hans Sipma

Some years ago photographer Hans Sipma came with his wife to an open garden in our old digs in Kerrisdale. I believe that she may have driven because Sipma was in an Italian cyclist uniform and was holding a very red and very expensive bike. I asked him about the bike and he gave me a figure that was close to the price of a Chevrolet Malibu. He then said, “I could never afford a Ferrari so I bought this.”

I have admired Sipma from the very beginning when we arrived in Vancouver in 1975. He and Mike Paris had a basement studio (below where my eventual studio would one year be on the Farmer’s Building, now gone, on Granville and Robson. The pair took photographs for the catalogue of Eaton’s which was across the street. A few times our daughters modeled for it and Sipma and Paris took their pictures.

Through the years I have had long chats with Sipma about cars. He has a pragmatic approach to everything. He just makes sense in a balance almost unemotional way.

Sipma’s photograph at the Vancouver Planetarium (of the Pacific Space Centre) blasting off as a spacecraft was one of the first digitally manipulated images in Vancouver. Sipma has stayed ahead, always.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of cycling with Sipma and it is my hope that I can do this again.

He visited my digs and I took a picture with my Mamiya RB-67, Fujiroid b+w 3200 and a pinhole body cap. The picture is underexposed but I like it.

As for Sipma it is people like him that make me feel that not all is lost for our city while there is at least one pragmatic voice.

Addendum:

A correction courtesy of Hans Sipma

 My Space Centre certainly wasn’t anywhere near the first digitally manipulated images in Vancouver.  There is a Safeway campaign from1989 I shot that was digitally combined by a firm out of the US.  That was the first time any of my shots had been combined digitally.