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| Kelly Tough - Ektachrome |
In 1956 I was almost 15 years old living with my mother in a
mining community in northern Mexico, in Nueva Rosita, Coahuila. My mother
taught grade 8, 7 and 6 in a school for the children of the American employees
of American Smelting and Refining Company.
We lived in an apartment suite attached to the American
Hotel. We had our three meals at the hotel so my mother rarely cooked. After
lunch or dinner I would sometimes go to the reading room. There was a
Mexican/American engineer called Juan Jaime who lived in our hotel. He was
subscribed to Playboy, True, Argosy and Esquire. He would leave
his magazines for others to read. It wasn’t in a Playboy where I saw my first
semi-nude. In those days Esquire was much racier.
But how could I have possibly imagined that someday in the
early 80s I would be assigned to photograph three Canadian (Vancouverites) ex-Playboy Playmates for
story written by Les Wiseman for Vancouver
Magazine? I did not understand then (and I did not complain) why I was
given the job to take the photographs and not a fashion photographer.
In those days when I shot on location with portable backdrops
made of cushy cloth. I used a Mamiya RB-67 which meant I had the capability of
testing first with Polaroid.
The two Polaroids here I had up in a bulletin board in my
Kerrisdale darkroom until four years ago when we moved to Kits. Today I found
them and filed them with the Kelly Tough file. They do have a charm and
especially as these Polaroids for medium format film cameras are no longer
made.