Bonding
Monday, November 10, 2025
 |
| Molly Parker & Lynne Stopkevich - March 1997 |
Of late I have pleasantly
noted that my Lillooet daughter Alexandra and my Burnaby daughter Hilary call
each other every day. I call this sisterly bonding. It was only when I was 21
that I finally met a half-brother in Buenos Aires. The closest I have arrived
at the concept of bonding was the very close relationship I had with my wife
Rosemary. It all began when we were married in February 1968 and continued
until she died in Dec 2020.
In 1978 when I had been
doing photography work at Vancouver Magazine I was invited to a monthly reunion
of contributors that was called a pissup. It was in one of them that I met a tall
photographer with a radio voice called James La Bounty. When I asked him what
kind of photography he did he answered, “I do conceptual portraiture.” I thought
he was a pretentious SOB but I soon began to understand what he was talking
about.
At first you faced an art
director who gave you your assignment with some sort of explanation of what was
to be done. This soon came with the questionable improvement of a fax. Then
like magic I would receive faxed manuscripts of the articles I had to
illustrate. It was then when I really began that interesting procedure of
finding a concept for the job at hand.
With Globe and Mail
reporter Christopher Dafow I saw a film called Kissed. After seeing it I had an idea for a
concept. I had actress Molly Parker and director Lynne Stopkevich come to my
studio. I wanted to convey their bonding.
When film director Lynne
Stopkevich and actor Molly Parker walked into my studio on September 24, 2000 I
had only one mission and that was to explain with one photograph my suspicion
that a special bond existed between them. This bond had allowed them to make
Kissed and the then yet-to-be released Suspicious River. Both films conveyed to
me an almost alien point of view. I realized that this disturbing yet
refreshing feeling was that both films were made with a woman’s point of view.
I had been disappointed in the past by the films of American director Katheryn
Bigelow as well as those by Nora Ephron. Molly Parker’s performance in
Suspicious River is so astounding that I wanted to show in a photograph the
invisible bond that must exist between the two women.
No matter what I tried I
wasn’t getting anywhere. I told them to rest. At that point I saw them get
really close. I told them to not move and I shot a Polaroid. I then shot it
with film.
To me the result conveys
that special bonding between women. The concept did not come from thought but
from observing an instant. I wonder what James La Bounty would have done.
The photograph in the scan here was not the one that the Globe ran. I had a further concept wich involved going to Mountain View Cemetery as the film Kissed was about burying little animals and from there to a funereal human connection.
Then & Now
Sunday, November 09, 2025
I was very upset the other
day when I went into my files of countries and cities and I could not find
Spain. I looked and looked. Then I went to our family files that are dated by
years. And that is where I found France/Spain 1985.
My Rosemary was an
adventurous traveller and somehow we went to Spain and France with our two
daughters. We flew to Paris. From Paris we flew to Madrid and we rented a car
and drove all the way to Málaga.
In that huge file where I
may have 150 slides and b+w negatives (taken with Kodak b+w Infrared film there
were many prints. The one in this blog was at the Alhambra in Seville. Just
because of my curiousity (generated by my idleness) I decided to compare a scan
of the print with a scan of the negative using my Epson V700 Scanner.
I am unable to convince
all those younger persons obsessed with what they call analog photography to
the merits of shooting film, yes shooting film, but not making darkroom prints.
We old photographers well knew the limitations of the darkroom to coax out from
negatives and slide the details that were always there. The enlarger,
photographic paper combination had its limits. I would use my colour head
enlarger and partially project on my paper with the head in yellow (for some
shadow detail) and then I would switch to magenta to get some contrast. To do
this I would use Ilford Multigrade paper that we well knew was not archival.
Note the yellow spot on the scanned print.
Once I scan a negative I
use a 22 year old Photoshop 8 that does not invent shadow detail. The detail is
there and can bring it out. Then when I
print the scan with my Epson P700 I get a result that surpasses the darkroom
print. There is nothing artificial in the result. It is simply the way it has
always been but the negative had to face the limitations of that “analog”
darkroom.
The Constant Rose - Jorge Luís Borges
 |
| Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' - 9 November 2025 |
In today’s grey Sunday I
went to my back lane garden and I was rewarded by my Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad’ being in bloom. I was almost sad to cut it so
I could scan it because it had two buds. But with the weather as it is those
two buds might have potential energy to open but they will not. I knew of a
Borges Poem in which he used the title in English (something he often did)
called the The Constant Rose.
Below the poem in both Spanish and English.
The Constant Rose - Jorge Luís Borges
A los quinientos años de la Hégira
Persia miró desde sus alminares
la invasión de las lanzas del desierto
y Attar de Nishapur miró una rosa
y le dijo con tácita palabra
como el que piensa, no como el que reza:
-Tu vaga esfera está en mi mano. El tiempo
nos encorva a los dos y nos ignora
en esta tarde de un jardín perdido.
Tu leve peso es húmedo en el aire.
La incesante pleamar de tu fragancia
sube a mi vieja cara que declina
pero te sé más lejos que aquel niño
que te entrevió en las láminas de un sueño
o aquí en este jardín, una mañana.
La blancura del sol puede ser tuya
o el oro de la luna o la bermeja
firmeza de la espada en la victoria.
Soy ciego y nada sé, pero preveo
que son más los caminos. Cada cosa
es infinitas cosas. Eres música,
firmamentos, palacios, ríos, ángeles,
rosa profunda, ilimitada, íntima,
que el Señor mostrará a mis ojos muertos
En La rosa profunda, 1975
The Unending Rose
Five hundred years in the
wake of the Hegira,
Persia looked down from
its minarets
on the invasion of the
desert lances,
and Attar of Nishapur
gazed on a rose,
addressing it in words
that had no sound,
as one who thinks rather
than one who prays:
"Your fragile globe
is in my hand; and time
is bending both of us,
both unaware,
this afternoon, in a
forgotten garden.
Your brittle shape is
humid in the air.
The steady, tidal fullness
of your fragrance
rises up to my old,
declining face.
But I know you far longer
than that child
who glimpsed you in the
layers of a dream
or here, in this garden,
once upon a morning.
The whiteness of the sun
may well by yours
or the moon's gold, or
else the crimson stain
on the hard sword-edge in
the victory.
I am blind and I know
nothing, but I see
there are more ways to go;
and everything
is an infinity of things.
You, you are music,
rivers, firmaments,
palaces, and angels,
O endless rose, intimate,
without limit,
which the Lord will
finally show to my dead eyes."
Spanish; trans.
Alastair Reid