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| Hannah Parkhouse 2023 - Fuji X-E3 |
As one waits for that inevitability (one not thought of when I was young) I want to put some sort of order to what is left of my life. There is a story written by Alejo Carpentier, the Cuban poet and writer who coined the expression “lo real maravilloso” or magic realism that comes to mind often. It is called Viaje a la semilla or Journey Back to the Source in which someone watching a funeral ceremony from the outside notices that the lit candles are getting longer and a ship disintegrates as the wood it is made of goes back to the trees and the nails to the iron ore in the ground.
Today Sunday I had the presence of my model friend Hannah Parkhouse. She is only 26 but she wrote to me that she was beginning to feel her age and wanted me to take some photographs. Because I am 83 I can state that the only woman I am interested is Rosemary who died five years ago. The idea of erotic photography is far from my mind. I decided I wanted to photograph that essence of her that makes her a woman. To me it is and was the intelligent expression of her looking into my camera.
In 1962 while living in Mexico City I had only one camera which was a Pentacon-F SLR I had purchased while in Austin, Texas in 1958. I told myself I needed another camera and one that would have the same lens mount as the Pentacon’s. At a used camera store called Foto Rudiger on Avenida Carranza Street I found a used Asahi Pentax S-3. It was black and it showed the brass behind the black paint.
I used this camera on December 1 of last year to photograph Mexico City photographer Pedro Meyer. I wrote about that here. Pedro Meyer
For those photographs I used a portable studio light, a softbox and the original 55mm f-2 lens.
With that recent photographic even I decided that I would photograph Hannah even more reflecting my past roots in Mexico around 1962 when I had no flash. I loaded the 3 camers, 2 with b+w 100 ISO film and the third, the Canon Pellix given to me by my architect Abraham Rogatnick, with 800 ISO Kodak colour negative film.
Another decision was that I would photograph Hannah in my house and not in my studio and with no flash. I eliminated the use of a tripod and shot wide open. Some of the pictures will not be that sharp.
When asked about the difference between film and digital I always answer, “Uncertainty”.
There is a beauty to that anticipation. I will find out on Monday at 4:30 when I will pick up the film at The Lab.
A hard-to-describe to folks who shoot digital is the pleasure of going into my car with the negatives and holding them by the windshield to see the results.
