Karen Kampbell - May 1989

Del ár. hisp. *azzahr, y este del ár. zahr 'dado1'; literalmente 'flores'.

Azar is a lovely  Spanish that when you see that z you know that it comes from the Arabic as the RAE (Real Academia Española) Dictionary defines that in its etymology. It means chance or my preferred serendipity but its original meaning was flowers..

In May June 1989 my portrait of model Karen Campbell appeared in the Georgia Straight as an Intro. Writer John Lekich and I had gone to see editor Charles Campbell and we told him we knew this extraordinarily beautiful woman. We suggested that he place it in his newspaper with a short accompanying essay. These became Intros. Ours was the first.

In 1989 I was crazy trying to imitate the Hollywood portraits of the 40s as perfected by George Hurrell. This sort of thing involved many lights including a focusing spotlight. Years before Angie from Beau Photo had sold me one for $15. In that spotlight I would slip in metal gobos (go-betweens) that had patterns stamped on them. In the case of Campbell I projected clouds.

I believe that this is as close as I ever got to George Hurrell.

When my photograph appeared in the Straight I can tell that the result was inferior to my print. In those days scanners were still not in operation. The image in this blog is one of the scanned b+w 6x7cm negative.

I started this with azar or serendipity because I am doing my best of filing all my photographs in preparation for my eventual oblivion. My daughters will decide what to do with my extreme output.

Today I found this single Ektachrom e under some of my Nikons. I have no idea how it got here and no memory of ever taking any Ektachromes of Campbell. I must have somehow copied an 8x10 b+w print and there were reflections. The slight blue cast is normal for Ektachromes.

Perhaps this one image leaves Hurrell behind and this is my own to savour.

Something I must mention here how my program refuses to accept the existence of the word Ektachrome.