Life photographer Philippe Halsman was once told to photograph open heart surgery. Like all good photographers he did his research and was allowed to witness one. When he saw the blood he fainted. The surgeon asked him how he planned to take photographs if he saw blood again. Halsman answered, “I will be behind my camera.”
Quite a few years ago the wife of one of the singers of the Vancouver Punk band No Fun told me that she was going for hip replacement surgery. She wanted me to photograph her in the nude in my studio before the operation and nude again once it had been replaced. I have no idea how she got the permission but she told me that I would be able to photograph the operation. This I did and I can attest here that I saw a lot of blood. Somehow I did not faint and I used one camera with colour film and another with b+w.
There is something about having been a photographer in that last century. I had access to lots of stuff that would have been prohibited to most people.
It was in Acapulco for something like that,where on assignment for Vancouver Magazine, I was supposed to photograph the chief of the city’s federal police. I was warned by the chief (we had been neighbours year before in Mexico City) that he was going to show me everything, but that I had to be careful as he could lose his job.
I witnessed a suspect being tortured by the shaking of a bottle of pop with chilli up his nose. One day one of his plainclothes men came into his office. Felipe (the chief) opened a drawer and gave him a .22 revolver. The next day the plainclothes man returned with the gun. I asked Felipe what this was all about. He said, “Alejandro yesterday we had a cop killer. Today we don’t anymore.”
Living now in my Kitsilano pad (when was the last time anybody used that word?) with my two cats, I welcome the safe boredom of not having to do anything.
I must point out that once, when they when a dentist in Mexico City used a miniature jackhammer to remove a tooth of mine and blood flowed, I fainted. The dentist and Rosemary picked me up from the floor.
When I go for a blood test, I turn around not to look. I fainted once.
It is interesting that “sangrón” in Mexico is a lame insult for an idiot. I may be one of those.