Rosemary 1969

For anybody who may go further than looking at my blog photographs and perhaps read their content they might notice my constant reference to Argentine writer Jorge Luís Borges. Of late I keep repeating how he often wrote that first times are repeated as first times over and over. 

Photograph by Andrew Taylor 1968

Whenever I look at the framed portraits, etc. of my wife Rosemary I am instantly taken to the moment where she is facing my camera and I am about to press the shutter. This memory that Julian Barnes in his latest book Departure(s) [no idea why he has that s in brackets] calls IAM or Involuntary Autobiographical Memory is the pleasant but obsessive culprit.

IAM - Julian Barnes 

1968

Today Saturday I am a bit more cheerful as my ailing Niño seems to be recovering. I decided to go to my oficina and look at a large binder with most of the photographs I took of my family in Mexico. I was looking for some particular ones and they were not there. I have a two large metal drawers with files that I call Family. It was there were I found the first photographs I took of Rosemary and also the ones where my Yorkshire compadre Andrew Taylor took in colour of us with my Asahi Pentax S-3.

There were some colour negatives that I had not notice before of Rosemary and a nutty one taken by Andrew of the two of us. In one the photographs Rosemary is showing the beginning of that sad face she seemed to use when she posed for me. I wonder what she was thinking about to make her look sad?

Few people and even some photographers do not understand the intimacy involved in scanning these negatives and looking at them enlarged on a monitor. As you remove the embedded dust of years you see things you may not have noticed before. There was this colour negative (I was able to remove most of the yellow cast (age of picture?). What made me curious is that Rosemary had this little wooden cross around her neck. Some photographers my age might know that when you have an old negative you put your finger on the side of your nose and rub the grease on the negative. Scratches and most dust will disappear.

Before we were married I took her, around 20 December 1967, to meet my mother who lived in Veracruz. On Mocambo beach I found this little driftwood that looked like a cross. I immediately just put a metal ring in the back and made it a necklace.

With the wonders of a scanner, just a few minutes ago I printed the photograph, found the cross and scanned them together.

What a pleasure it is to combine the technology of the past century with that of this one.

The last two photographs feature the white bird dress that was Rosemary's wedding dress. Just a couple of days ago when I saw a photograph of a Mexican dress called a hupil I came to understand that her wedding dress is indeed a huipil.