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Monday, February 02, 2026

Rosemary without Mayonaisse


 

 

 The Great Expectations of Judy Brown

 

In 1964 while going to Mexico City College I feel for a short blonde called Judy Brown. She was coldish but did pose for some photographs. In those days Agfa made a very fast film called Isopan Record. I decided I would photograph her with the light of match. It worked out well. The school year ended and I never saw Brown again.

 


 

There is something about photography that somehow it allows one (me) to relive past moments of my life. I can scan Brown negatives (I have them to this day) and write a couple of blogs showing the match photographs.


But even better I can try the technique many years later and even modify the technique. In the last few weeks I have been writing blogs that feature photographs that I took of Rosemary in Mexico City in 1969. She was nude and I cropped for my sense of family good taste.

I found (I had forgotten) three shotsm where unlike Brown, she is holding a candle. Because this century has the bonus of me being able to combine the technology of the last century (the b+w negs I took of Rosemary)  with the technique of putting one negative on top of the other and then scanning them with my Epson V700. I call these scanner negative sandwiches without mayonnaise. The trick is to pick negs from the same session.

I believe that I have done well with the scans here. But I cannot escape that feeling when I look at the scans on my monitor that I am back to Mexico City 1969 in our little apartment on Calle Herodoto. This is when Rosemary would serve me fine meals and she had nothing on her plate. I was too stupid to realize that we had little money so she was only splurging on me. And how would I have known that 57 years later I would be writing this blog and using those negatives. They are in perfect condition since I always overwashed my negatives for archival permanence.