A Panoramic Texas on a Lazy, Rainy, Vancouver Day
Saturday, August 25, 2018
Today August 25 it is finally raining in Vancouver. You
could call it a typically lazy Vancouver day. I don’t like them much as I like
the hot days that preceded today’s coolness.
On September 20 Nora Patrich and I are having a show at the
Galería Vermeer in Buenos Aires. Since Rosemary is coming with me we already
have our two suitcases open in the floor of the piano room.
She accompanied me
to my yearly buying pilgrimage at Mark’s Work Warehouse where I purchased two
pairs of black jeans and two pairs of blue jeans. Also in my getting ready for
Buenos Aires I added five pair of Mark’s special black socks.
The jeans are in the wash. What to do on a Sunday like this
one?
Easy.
I have scanned some panoramic b+w photographs (that until now had not seen the light of day) that I took in
Michael East’s south Texas Santa Fe
Ranch in 2011. With our two granddaughters in tow Rosemary and I embarked on
that glorious drive in our 2007 Chevrolet Malibu.
As an Argentine It would be difficult for me to say that I
am a vegetarian. That, I am not. But these days I may eat meat once a week and
chicken in a couple of days. I like my vegetables, fruits and pasta.
But I cannot erase from my memory the idea that I am indeed
a lapsed carnivore. On the subject my St. Ed’s High School mate Mike East told
me that without the influx of Mexican cowboys into his ranch it would be very
difficult for him and other ranchers of the area to supply all that meat that
Americans so love at Macdonald’s.
Trump’s wall could be a good thing only if you thought that
it might make some people refrain from eating the (lovely it is) stuff.
Animal rights lovers might object to the scenes of
dramatically roping cattle and bringing them into the ground for vaccination,
branding and the “conversion” of young male bulls into oxen.
Most of us if taken into a slaughter house might have at
least one meat free week. The fact is that in 2017 meat is still in most of our
diets and today for breakfast I had four nice, well-done, crispy bacon strips.
When Rosemary and I are in Buenos Aires we will certainly
indulge in a few bifes de chorizo (the usual cut of beef, in spite of that “chorizo”word)
that Porteños usually accompany with an “ensalada mixta”.
Looking at these panoramics that I took with a swivel lens Noblex (one that uses 120 film in 2¼ by 7 inch negative size) for me is a revelation. While my Fuji X-E1 and X-E3 do shoot panoramics I believe that the actual rotation of the lens is what gives these a look that cannot be matched by my digital wonder.
That Swiveling Noblex 175
Friday, August 24, 2018
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| Lauren at the Santa Fe Ranch, Texas |
I will not deny the awesome capability of the modern digital
camera. It can, within reason, do anything. But to me it fails in one (not to
me) unexpected way.
You would never think of unscrewing a Phillips screw with a
hammer or hammering a nail with the handle of a Phillips screw driver. Each
tool has its principal use.
In the photographs that I took of Texas cowboys in 2011 that
are
here and in the panoramic photographs in this blog which I took on the
way to Texas in our 2007 Chevrolet Malibu I think they are special because I
used the right tool. It is a German-made Noblex 175. It has a swivel lens and
the 120 film that I load it with will shoot a negative (or transparency) that
is 2¼ by 7 inches.
In that trip I took the Noblex, two Nikon FM-2s, one Pentax
MX, and one Mamiya RB-67 Pro-SD.
Picking up any of these cameras transported me
(via a gentle suggestion by the camera in question) to do this but not that.
And that but not this with another camera.
While it is possible to take b+w and colour pictures and,
panoramics with my Fuji X-E1 and X-E3 (I did not own a digital camera then but
did use my iPhone 3G with some interesting results) the variety of the
photographs that I came back with could not have really been done with one
camera. Switching cameras, not using zoom lenses, forced me to pause and think.
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| Gallup, New Mexico, iPhone3G , 2011 |
 |
| Bryce Canyon |
 |
| Near Gallup, New Mexico |
Emily of New Moon y Catalina pispea
Thursday, August 23, 2018
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| Catalina María |
En una de mis
cartas electrónicas a mi sobrina lejana Catalina María que vive en Buenos Aires, le escribí que mi Rosemary y dos hijas Alejandra y Hilary habían viajado
a Prince Edward Island para encontrarse con familia. También iban a aprovechar
para visitar la casa de la niñez de la autora Lucy Maud Montgomery en Cavendish.
Mis dos hijas y mi mujer, todas leyeron los libros de Montgomery. Al volver
trajeron los libros de Rosemary que incluían una linda edición de Anne of Green
Gables.
Al leer la
nota de Catalina María me quedé maravillado por su uso lujoso del castellano. De ese castellano Adolfo Bioy Casares le daba el nombre the argentino exquisito.
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Prince
Edward Island es el hogar de una de las -por no decir la única- heroínas de mi
niñez. Lucy Maud Montgomery, la misma mujer que creó a Anne of Green Gables,
escribió otra serie de novelas sobre una Emily of New Moon. Emily vivía en P.E.
Island, rodeada de amigos artistas y de familias victorianas. Si recogía su
pelo morocho en cierta manera, casi podía pasar por una mujer bella. Emily tenía
la capacidad de ver la belleza del mundo y el anhelo ardiente de plasmarla en
papel y tinta.
Te parecerá
tonto, pero he llegado a tomar decisiones vitales basándome en esos libros.
Emily y su búsqueda eterna de la palabra perfecta por los recovecos de P.E.
Island me han formado como ningún otro personaje ficticio lo ha logrado hacer.
Espero que,
en su viaje por la isla, tus niñas puedan saborear la magia que yo apenas
pispeé en esas páginas de la Canadá de los años Victorianos.
