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| Tannia at the Room 615 of the Marble Arch Hotel - Early 80s |
When I see mothers and fathers pushing a baby carriage here in my Kitsilano I become aware that we all go through stages that in some cases we cannot return to. I have noticed that while I carried either one of my daughters when they were babies in Mexico City on a contraption that was on my back now that is done in the front.
I now face after my Rosemary's death 5 years ago (we were married 52 years) a life of living alone.Will that couple one day have that same situation?
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| 10 March 2026 in my Kits home |
There are two pleasant women who are currently working on a definitive (and very professional) documentary on the ecdysiast phenomenon from the late 70s to now, a particularly important and famous in our Vancouver. In those 70s, 80s and even in the 90s I photographed many of these dancers. I don’t think my photographs were either cheesy or disrespectful which is perhaps why I may have been the only male photographer allowed to take photographs in their dressing rooms.
Last week I was interviewed by an incredibly professional team as the photograph here shows. I was given a list of questions they day before. I feel confident that these two women will bring the phenomenon to a pleasant light. One of the women involved went into the diary of her mother, when she died it was only then that she found out what her profession had been in those late 70s.
That daughter has shown great interest in posing for me in honour of her mother. This makes me face a conundrum. I was a nicely married man aged 35 in those late 70s, and I was doing everything possible to improve my career as a photographer in Vancouver. I took photographs of these dancers to improve my portrait skills. The same happened with my extensive documentation of our city’s punk rock community.
Many of these photographs of dancers I took in the best room of that “mala muerte” (fleabag) hotel that was the Marble Arch. I took women to the best room which was Room 615. Many years later I shot pictures there for a fashion spread for the Georgia Straight involving Ballet BC dancers and also photographed poet Michael Turner there for Quill and Quire.
A Dream at the Marble Arch -The Georgia Straight - Quill and Quire
It may have been in the early 80s when I was obsessed with in some way to show my vision of the erotic without being pornographic. One of first subjects was a beautiful woman called Tannia. I think that these pictures now are neither here nor there but seen in the light of our 21st century slowly but increasing awareness on how women should be treated they do not offend. But I would never now photograph anybody smoking cigarette.
How am I going to photograph this woman in the spirit of her ecdysiast mother in light of the fact that those photographs I took of her mother’s contemporaries were done in the late 70s?
To make this all much more problematic is that a couple of weeks ago I read a posthumous 1975 book On Women by Susan Sontag. Just like in her 1975 now an old man has character and an old woman is seen as ugly.
