It was not long after I got my first driver’s license (a Veracruz one) in 1967 that I married Rosemary. I had met her at the end of that year and we were married on 8 November 1968. I decided to teach her to drive in the blue VW you see in the picture here. She hit a rock and that was the end of the lesson.

I quickly found out you do not teach a marriage partner to drive. We had to wait until we arrived in Vancouver in 1975. A Dutch man (at the time I thought he was a saint) taught Rosemary to drive.

In all the years she ever drove (unlike this idiot macho man) the only accidents she ever had were people bashing her parked car.

Rosemary would go to visit her mother in Brockville in winter. At the Ottawa airport she would rent a car in the evening and drive to Brockville in a snow storm.

That was my Rosemary.

I have written at length and often on how we humans have this human talent to associate. Yes, I know that my cats react to making a noise with a spoon on their tinned food. We are much better at association.

Going down or up the stairs I see many of my family portraits every day. I smile a bit but I mostly feel melancholic. The photographs represent moments that will not return and indicate that I now have a fractured family situation with no more roast beef/Yorkshire Pudding Christmas dinners (we always celebrated Christmas Eve).

When I looked at this recently gold framed sandwich photograph of Rosemary (a fave right now), I knew I had to find some sort of association so I could scan and write. The frame with my driver’s licenses is in my oficina.

And so here we have it. My Rosemary was as good a driver as Argentine F1 World Champion Juan Manuel Fangio. And yes I have had accidents that did not happen in the parking lot.

Kodak Ektar 100

Kentmere 100

Kodak Technical Pan

Rollei Infrared Film

Ilford 3200 ISO 35mm

While I am a product of the 20th century, particularly in my profession as a photographer, I have found that the distant technology of that century can be nicely combined with that of this one.

Around 2007 I photographed the beautiful Ona Grauer for approximately one year. In my effort to tie up loose ends I have been contacting my subjects and friends in my past. I connected with Grauer who was most enthusiastic as she was going to be 49 on Saturday 16 November. She came to my house on the day before. She instructed me that she wanted to look her age and that I was not to use any kind of softening filters.

Ona Grauer then

Photography, particularly portrait photography, depends on the dependable pattern of consistency and routine. I broke that rule by deciding that I was going to photograph her with my medium format Mamiya RB-67. This camera has individual and removable film backs. I used 4 backs with four different films. To make it even more complicated I loaded a Nikon FM-2 with very fast 3200 ISO film.

Because my medium format film had ISO speeds of 100, 80 and 25 this meant that I had to be aware in how I looked at and set my two hand held Minolta meters. A further complication was that my 80 ISO Rollei Infrared Film necessitated the use of a deep red filter. I had to remember to take it out for other films and to use it when I shot with the Rollei.

Add to all that the used of a flash softbox for some of the photographs. Disaster perhaps? Not quite even though I tripped over flash cords. There was one embarrassing moment when I lifted the Nikon to my face and Grauer said, “Alex, you have the lens cap on.”

Those who only shoot with digital cameras often tell me that they can make any one picture they use into high contrast, mimic different kinds of films, do it in colour and then convert it to black and white. My argument is that a group of those different versions of the one picture are really one picture.

When I use more than one camera or different film backs the similar photographs are all unique.

To show off (just a tad) I picked two negatives from each of the five films I used and sandwiched them in a technique that I call “scanner sandwiches without mayonnaise”.

And here they are.

Post Data: One of the 120 format film for Mamiya that I shot is the now discontinued Kodak Technical Pan. It is the sharpest and least grain film ever made. I have quite a few rolls in my freezer. No local photo lab would be able to process it. I processed it! That exclamation point is appropriate as I had not processed film in 6 years. Luck was on my side and the roll developed nicely.

Top Rosa 'Susan Williams- Ellis' centre R. 'Mrs Oakley Fisher' right R. 'Queen of Sweden' 17 November 2024

Sometimes when I look at myself in a mirror, I understand that I am who I am because of the people who mentored me, influenced me and loved me. Ultimately I know that I am who I am because of my Rosemary.

I understand well (influenced by Joan Didion) that the only way to face grief is to write about it. In my case it is about Rosemary who has caused my grief because of her loss.

I calculate that over 50% of my blogs, since Rosemary died on 9 December 2020, are inspired by my thoughts about her.

Today I noticed these almost two open roses and the two buds. I know well that although they may have the potential of being able to open, they will not.

Rosemary liked all three, but special to both of us, is the yellow single tea rose, Rosa ‘Mrs. Oakley Fisher'.

After scanning these three, I would have gone upstairs to Rosemary, who in this weather, would have been on our bed, to show her. She would have smiled.

It is only now that I have come to think that potential in the future, even if it will not happen, is not too dissimilar to the concept of a memory in the past that will not again be repeated.

I have a definite and sure potential of remembering with smiles and with melancholy all those 52 years that Rosemary and I were together.