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| Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 16 October 2026 |
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| 21 October 2026 |
Inmigrants
who come to Vancouver want to have a new house or apartment, a brand new car
and everything they own must be shiny.
Their
children once they have lived her for a while come to understand the concept of
antique cars and newness is no longer so important.
I remember
that when I bought my Asahi Pentax S-3 at Foto Rudiger in Mexico City in 1962
(because I had little money to buy a new camera) I was attracted to the look of
this black camera showing its underlying brass.
But I was
not always enamoured with the idea of perfect newness. Scuffing my brand new
shoes was a slightly devastating happening as putting that dent on the new car.
A photograph
that I took of my two young daughters in 1979 sitting on a multi-coloured bench
of the Royal Hudson has been in my bedroom for years. A week ago I noticed how
much the print had faded. I had printed it in my home darkroom in Burnaby. I
have the original negative so I could have scanned it and made a new inkjet. I
chose to remove the print from the frame and scan that and then I fixed it.
Somehow while the new print might be correct in colour and contrast there is
something of the original which attracts me to the instant I snapped the
photograph.
Six years
after the death of my Rosemary I remember her as that young woman I first met
in 1967 while my portraits of her in months before she died are attractive to
my eye and in particular one where she is smiling holding her cat Casi-Casi. I have it on my oficina door. I smile when I see it.
The framed
family photographs on my home walls are all reminders of how time passes and
sometimes without our noticing the changes.
To begin
with an illustration for this blog I have as evidence a rose Rosa ‘A Shropshire
Lad’ in all its pristine glory and then as it faded days later.
How that
rose went from de pe a pa (Spanish from here to there) is reminded of how the
final change is death.
