Boris Riabov - 6 March 2025

The Keynote - 1915 - William Arthur Chase

My grandmother often told me that the devil knew more not because he was the devil but because he was an old man. Because I am 82, I can assert that I know stuff and that some of that stuff is useful.

I started taking photographs in 1958 and I have continued until now. And from now, I am continuing until I meet my oblivion.

It is for that that I can assert that the Holy Grail of photography in the 20^th century was a style that could be readily identified. We could discern the styles of Philippe Halsmann, Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Diane Arbus, Ansel Adams, and many more.

In this 21^st century with magazines and newspapers all but gone the profession of editorial (magazine, newspaper) photograph has all but disappeared.

Ansel Adams’s photos are famous to this day as we know where he took his pictures and we understand the clarity of his zone system that brings out the shadows without blowing out the whites.

Because of the proliferation of phone photographs, we now see lots of nature/garden, sunset photographs. It is very difficult (my opinion) for anybody to identify these photographs to a particular photographer. It was the portrait of that past century, where a sense of style was obvious and lighting was used.

I look at my large collection of photo books and I wonder who will want them when I am gone. At the same time I know why I purchased them and why I read them all.

To have an identifiable style in that 20^thcentury one had to rip off styles of other photographers, and sooner or later the rip-offs had enough variation that they became the property of the photographer. I have looked at photographs, sculptures and paintings and I have used them for inspiration. My photographs might not make the rip-off obvious but it is there. Even poetry such as that of Emily Dickinson and my countryman Jorge Luís Borges that inspires me to take photographs to illustrate one of their poems.

I equate a photographer with a 19th century American gunfighter. A gunfighter’s last shot had to be good or he would be dead. While death is not the result for a photographer who takes a bad photograph,  I would think that a photographer is as good as their last photograph.

Such was the case (a subjective opinion it is) of my photograph last night of the mercurial Boris Riabov who is gainfully employed by Beau Photo.

Boris Riabov - June 6, 2024

Because of the excellent (my opinion) algorithms of Facebook and Twitter and since I rarely comment or discuss politics and religion, my feed is a wonderful and constant show of Vincent van Goghs, and other artist of the pasts to this day. There was one that caught my eye. His name is William Arthur Chase:

 Born:  1878 - Bristol, England

Died:   1944 - Blewbury, England

Known for: Portrait and floral still life painting.

A few weeks before last night, I had been visited by Riabov and his Beau Photo friend Nicole Langdon-Davies. He sat down at my baby grand Chickering piano and played for almost 45 minutes. When a bit later I saw the Chase’s piano painting I was inspired.

For the photograph I used a Fuji X-E3 equipped with a Lensbaby attachement and wide-angle extension. I took 8 photographs and one (in my eyes is perfect).

Today Friday, March 7 I find myself still alive.

An added piece of information important to me is that the music on the Chickering was one of three albums of my great aunt Buenaventura Gálvez Puig who was a concert pianist. The book is open at a Chopin Impromtu.

Today I went to the opening of the fine Richmond nursery, Phoenix Perennials. I went with one intention which was to buy if they had it (they did) Arenaria balearica (Corsican Mint). Somehow the tons of it that grew between our path stones in our Kerrisdale garden did not make it to Kits. When you step on this tiny plant or pass your hand on it. Alas! Arenaria balearica is not the true Corsican Mint is Mentha requenii. It is far more fragrant.

But when I saw Helleborus ‘Ice N’Roses’ I knew I had to buy it. Rosemary would have noticed it immediately. As I wrote in this recent blog, the face of a helleborus is the face of Rosemary.

And of course Rosemary would have noticed that the nice Hebe 'Shiraz' had the same intense violet/red colour of the Hellebore. I bought it!

Rosemary-Hellebore-Sábato- Van Gogh 

Helleborus 'Ice N'Roses' & Hebe 'Shiraz' 4 March 2025

 

Pedro Armendáriz

A good friend today at a Commercial coffee joint told me that I must control my present depression with meds. One of my daughters insists I should seek counselling.

I rejected to my friend his suggestion of meds and kept my true thoughts to myself.

John Ford directed a film in 1947 called The Fugitive based on Graham Greene’s novel The Power and the Glory. It features a priest (called the whisky priest in the novel) who has lost his faith during the war against Catholicism in Mexico (called la Guerra de los Cristeros) during the mid 1920s. The priest is played by Henry Fonda, and, since the film parallels the Christ of the bible, Dolores del Río is a Mary Magdalene. What makes this film one of my favourites of all time is that the assistant director is Indio Fernández and the lighting and director of photography is the formidable (named one of the best of the 20^th century) Gabriel Figueroa.

When the whisky priest is finally caught he is to be executed in the morning. A lovely looking and wonderful Mexican actor, Pedro Armendáriz, plays the atheist policeman who offers Fonda brandy to ameliorate his execution.

It is here where Fonda utters something that to me is the most wonderful (and I take it to heart) statement that is not found in Greene’s book. Fonda says, “No thank you, I want to live my death”.

And so my depression over the loss of my wife (we lived together for 52 years) on 9 December 2020 is one that I do not want to forget. I do not want to make it less melancholic.

Like Fonda, I want to live her life gone in my own life. We shall never meet as we both believed in oblivion.

I feel that in my present melancholy my blog writing may be getting better and I am inspired to take photographs and scan my plants for me and for her memory.

As St. Luke in his gospel paraphrases Christ, “Do this in remembrance of me.” I remember her every waking moment and she haunts my dreams. I want that.

William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission.

I believe that what makes us human is our ability to associate (connect) disparate situations. I will admit that my cats Niño and Niña associate the word treats with what they will then get on my bed. But we humans can be more complex.

A perfect place for this sort of association, daydreaming, perhaps is being at a concert as I was last night. The program called Music of the Spheres steered me in the direction of all things astronomy of my life.

I remember going around 1952 to an estancia in the interior of the Argentine province of Corrientes. We were riding a Studebaker flat-bed truck at night. Such was the intensity of the Milky Way that I could have read a book. We spotted the Tres Marías (stars in the Southern Hemisphere).

At my boarding school, St.Edward’s High School in Austin Texas in the 10^th grade I became interested (perhaps pushed by the Russian launching of their satellite the year before) in astronomy so I built a 4 inch reflector telescope. Three years later with my cousin Dolores, in Mexico City we would go to our roof, telling my grandmother we wanted to focus it on the moon. This was untrue as we spied the goings on of the clandestine whore house next to ours.

One of the musical works last night was Musical Parnassus Suite No.  “Uranie” bu U.C.F. Fischer. I immediately thought of William Herschel

Uranus was the first planet found with the aid of a telescope. It was discovered in 1781 by astronomer William Herschel, although he originally thought it was either a comet or a star.

From there I transferred my thoughts to his son Sir John Herschel who invented photographic fixer. 

Sir John Herschel - Photograph Julia Margaret Cameron

 Ultimately I thought of the wonderful photograph taken by astronaut William Anders: Earthrise is a photograph of Earth and part of the Moon's surface that was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission.

In my thoughts about that photograph last night I had read an article in the Sunday New York Times hard copy (it crashes at my door on Saturday night).

In it there was this review of book for children that I found lovely. Because I have that subscription (now for 30 years) I am able to gift 10 articles for month with no pay wall. Here it is:

Earthrise NYTimes Article