Jericho Beach - 13 June 2025

I bought my first camera in 1958 in Austin, Texas. On a school trip to Washington DC I took my first photographs which now would be defined as street photographs. By the time I returned to my then home in Mexico City I took more street photographs.These were interesting as I went to beautiful towns in Mexico.

From being a street photographer, by the time I married my Rosemary in 1968 I started taking portraits. She was my first nude. But mid 70s with limited equipment and no lighting I photographed wealthy Mexican families for good money. Our neighbours in Arboledas, Estado de México attempted to persuade me not to move with my family to Vancouver in 1975 as according to them I was making my living as a photographer.

Once in Vancouver I stopped taking street photographs and began my career shooting stills at CBC variety shows and from there stills for CBC dramas like the Beachcombers.

I found Vancouver, in comparison to Mexico dull for street photographs. I was friends with Fred Herzog and admired his Kodachrome street shots. I equally admired the street photographs (Paris and Vancouver) of Alan Jacques who died on June 9^th. I feel privileged that he sent me a messaged on that day telling me that dying was not an easy thing.

Today as in most days that I cycle (a 3 speed bicycle) to Jericho Beach I take my Fuji X-E1 equipped with a Lensbaby and shoot was interest me. I guess these are street photographs in a way. 

When I made trips to Venice, Florence, Buenos Aires and Mérida I did also take street photographs. In Italy I used both a Widelux (with Kodak Infrared Film) and a Russian Horizont with colour negative film. 

Italy - Horizont  My former talent in Mexico, etc

So yes, sometimes I am a street photographer.   My confession here.

 

Rosa foetida 'Austrian Copper' 13 June 2025

 

My cardiologist is Victor F.Huckell besides being an excellent doctor, happens to have an unusual sense of humour. He wears loud ties and shirts and his advice and opinions are mint perfect.

Four months before my Rosemary died he called me to tell me that he had found out I was going to have a right knee replacement surgery. He strongly suggested I cancel the procedure as, “Your wife is going to need someone to take care of her.” Of course he was right and in some way I may have been coincidentally rewarded as I had no operation and I walk just fine.

On another day I told the doctor that my two cats, Niño and Niña were becoming human company for me. He disagreed, “Alex you are becoming feline.”

I am now modifying the doctor’s opinion and I am developing an intimate relationship with my roses. It is my rose scanning season and I do several per day. Most of my friends have no opinions on my scans. I scan my roses following Gary Winogrand’s dictum that he photographed things to find out what things look like photographed. I scan my roses not knowing exactly what they will look like at the end. I have fun being in my office and the roses are my companions.

But they are not always my only companions. Niño likes to sit on a chair next to me while I am at my computer in my oficina. Today it was Niña.

Perhaps I have what is now called Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). I am not only human, but also feline and part rose.

Rosa 'Ketchup & Mustard' 12 June 2025

Why I remember this event in my life is beyond me. But I do remember being in the kitchen with my mother when I was 8 in Buenos Aires. We had a live-in housekeeper and cook called Mercedes Bazaldúa. My mother told her, “Mercedes ve a la tienda de Don Pascual y compra una botella de algo que se llama catsup." I do not remember why it was my mother wanted kétchup.

Since then I have adopted the American habit of putting ketchup on French fries. My use of ketchup began in my Catholic boarding school St. Edwar’s High School in Austin, Texas in 1958. For breakfast they served us Korean War surplus powdered eggs. The scrambled eggs were runny. They were awful. So we all ate them with lots of ketchup.

To this day when I make scrambled eggs I use ketchup. My youngest daughter Hilary who knows of my liking has given me a Heinz Spicy Ketchup. And of course I will not eat meatloaf without ketchup.

My memory of mustard is from being in the kitchen of my Uncle Harry’s in Buenos Aires when I was also 8. He was mixing some Colman’s Powdered Mustard and I distinctly saw him adding sugar. I adore Colman’s and I do add sugar to it.

You can imagine my delight when I went today to my local Hunters Garden Centre. They had this Floribunda Rose called Rosa ‘Ketchup & Mustard’. I was immediately invaded by my memories and I knew I had to buy the rose so I could scan it.

Astrantia major subs involucrata 'Shaggy' 11 June 2025

Today after our extra Sylvia Restaurant tertulia, I invited  my friends Jim Jardine, Ian McGuffie and newly found (we had lost track of her) fantastic photographer, Storme Morrison for a visit to my Kitsilano rose garden. We had a pleasant afternoon. My cat Niño was most social. My youngest daughter Hilary would have told me, “Papi is it nice that you see people and that they visit you.”

I no longer tell her that when people are gone I am immediately left with a profound emptiness. It is a vacancy, an absence of my Rosemary. I know that as soon as I clean up, feed the cats I will have to find some way of writing about this emptiness in my soul.

I spotted Astrantia major subsp. involucrata ‘Shaggy’. This is not the kind of plant you go to a nursery to find. It would be a rare plant these days. Mine was Rosemary’s and it flowers every year. There is a little family story behind this plant, that because the flowers are not colourful, it is that kind plant that a snob (my Rosemary) would like.

Years ago in our Kerrisdale garden, I cut some of the astrantias and put them in a vase in our dining room. A few hours later there was a foul odour. The flowers of the plant were the culprits. I identified the nasty scent to having suffered Mexico City buses in the summer. I told Rosemary that henceforth it was the Mexican Armpit Plant.

Perhaps some months later my eldest daughter inquired about the plant. It seems she had inherited some of her mother’s snobbishness for plants. “Papi, what is the name of the plant?” A few days later she told me that at the nursery they had no idea of a plant called the Mexican Armpit Plant.

Somehow writing about Rosemary’s plant ameliorates my emptiness. Scanning the plant is fun. I have a purpose. That is important.

Of course if I have visitors tomorrow I will be back to square one.

And there is this added information about armpits. In Spanish the word for it is one of the ugliest words in Spanish - sobaco. When we were living in Mexico it took me years to realize that the deodorant that I called odorono was in fact an English combination of odor-no.

Tradescantia x andersoniana 'Concord Grape' - 11 June 2025

 

Today I am going to an extraordinary extra meeting of friends at the Sylvia Hotel. We usually meet at 1:3 on the last Wednesday of the month. Eager attendees demanded another one.

I believe that a photographer (artist perhaps? ) like a 19^th century American gunfighter is as good as his last one. We know what would have happened to that eagle-eye gunfighter had he not been as quick.

I spotted Tradescantia x andersoniana ‘Concord Grape’ in two places in my garden today. I decided I would scan it and take it to the Sylvia Tertulia (look it up). For me there is a story not only behind the man who hybridized this tradescantia but also to a past memory of lazy siestas with Rosemary in Mexico City we had between our morning and late afternoon English classes we gave at American companies like Colgate/Palmolive to Mexican executives.

It was in those siestas that before or after our slightly active proceedings that we would watch the original Start Trek which was dubbed into Spanish and called La Odisea del Espacio.

We liked it a lot in spite of the dubious translation into Spanish. A few times Captain Kirk exclaimed in surprise, “¡Áy Chichuahua!”.

I loved the beautiful shape of the Romulan “bird of prey” spacecraft. For years every time I spot my tradescantia in bloom I connect.

I wonder if my friends at the Sylvia will connect, too?