8 November 2025

In my many years in my studio on the corner of Granville and Robson I got to know two artist who were on the same floor as I was. One was Neil Wedman and the other was Rodney Graham.  I knew the latter well enough that I was aware that behind his serious face with glasses there was a sense of humour that has escaped most who have written about him.

I photographed him a few times and in every one of those cases we shared a sense of humour and knowledge of photography. It was one afternoon that came into my studio and told me, “Alex I have a problem I am taking photographs of trees with a 4x5 inch view camera. The images are upside-down. What can I do?” I answered, “Rodney you can spend big money getting a right-side-upper or you can learn to take your  trees upside-down.” That he did and the rest is history.

I like to point out that sometimes we photographers get information that writers and journalist do not. I was assigned to photograph Graham for the Globe and Mail for an article about his show at the Helen and Morris Belkin Gallery at UBC. When I showed up I found walls that had white rectangles with dots in them. In the middle of the gallery was a Yamaha grand piano. Every couple of minutes one or two notes would sound. The piano was programmed. I asked Graham -“What gives?” With an absolutely straight face he answered, “I have programmed the piano to play a Wagner work in 27,000 years. The dots on the walls are those individual notes.”

I then volunteered that I had an idea for a photograph. I would rip off Arnold Newman’s 1946 photograph of Stravinsky. This I did. Fortunately in 1996 the Globe art directors had a sense of humour and liked to receive photographs that were out of the ordinary. I asked them to respect my crop so that the image would look more like the Newman one. They did.

A third time that I photographed Graham was in my studio. I told him that I had been inspired by the photograph of a German intellectual taken by August Sander. He asked me to produce the Sander book. He leafed through it and pointed out the exact photograph I had been inspired by. Graham not only had a sense of humour but he also had an incredible knowledge of art and photographic art. The Globe, by my instruction ran the portrait upside-down.

Today was a greyish 8 November day. I had the idea that I would imagine that either Rick Staehling or Chris Dahl (former pushy art directors for Vancouver Magazine) had assigned me to photograph Graham’s chandelier under the Granville Bridge. They would have stressed that it had to be different. I went there with two digital cameras and a swivel lens Horizont with infrared film. For the latter photographs taken with that film camera I will pick up the processed roll on Monday afternoon. The ones here will have to do.