Rosemary's side of the bed and her nightie - 4 December 2021

In the years since Rosemary died on December 9 2020 I have written many times about our bedtime intimacies and even listed all the beds we had from the time we were married on 8 February 1968.

I have also used the photograph here many times showing her nightie on her side of our last bed.

This time I want to add something my mother used to say when I was a little boy in Buenos Aires. At bedtime she would say, “Alex es hora del baile de las sábanas blancas,” or “Alex it’s time for the dance of the white sheets.” Of course in those days sheets were only white.

It was perhaps because of that memory that I photographed a lovely woman on my studio psychiatric couch. I cannot say it is erotic. I just think it is one of the loveliest photographs I have ever taken.

Every night when I get to bed Rosemary’s portrait on the wall stares at me. My two cats are beside me. When I turn of the light, Rosemary keeps staring at me.

Nick Bantock

For months I have had an Ektachrome 6x7 slide (below) in which I figured out I used my camera to copy a b+w print. I could not place the name of the man. Only yesterday I figured out he is a writer. I went to my writer files and found Nick Bantock. 

This photograph is important for me as a few years before I had run into photographer James La Bounty who told me he was doing something he called conceptual photography. He inspired me and my first conceptual photograph was of writer, anthropologist, etc Robert Bringhurst.

Robert Bringhurst

When I went into Bantock’s files I found the tear sheet (that’s what we called them then) from the Globe and Mail and I noticed with some sort of delight that in not knowing how to deal with my photograph they called it Photo illustration by Alex Waterhouse-Hayward.

This kind of photography, which was called editorial photographer and which made me an editorial photographer is now a dying method in moribund newspapers and magazines in Vancouver.

It was a challenging pleasure to figure out a way of taking a portrait that was “different”.

Jim La Bounty

 

Top left - Rhododendron 'Golfer' - right Rhododendron augustinii 'Marion McDonnell'  - bottom Camellia x wiliamsii 'Donation' - 22 April 2026

Rosa 'Winchester Cathedral ' & Aquilegia vulgaris 'Double Pleat Blue  & White' 22 April 2026

The two scans I did today have cheerful colours so they may compensate for what will probably be a melancholic blog that is based on the fact that because I speak two languages I think in both of them and I am constantly comparing and contrasting words.

It is interesting for me to look at the word fulfill which seems be a redundant term. Its equivalent in Spanish is realizar which can either mean to find out (realize) or it means to fulfill a task or idea.

In the middle of all that I feel this emptiness in my soul. In Spanish emptiness translates to un vacío. To vaciar, means to empty the contents of something. Is that what my Rosemary’s death has done to my soul?

There are three words in English that to me have a similar meaning to how I feel.  This emptiness is corroding me and Rosemary is a limb of mine that has been amputated.

We all know that amputees can sometimes feel the missing limb.

Because Rosemary was part of me, something of her is still on me.

The above might not make any sense. But it was many years ago that I figured out that my blog was a Dear Diary. I write for me.

Erskine McPherson

It was sometime in 1991 that my Rosemary told me that we were going that evening to a meeting of the Vancouver Rose Society. When there, I told Rosemary, “Why have you brought me here? I am sitting on an uncomfortably hard chair watching 100 bad slides of Roses.” Eventually I saw the light while avoiding almost always taking photographs of individual roses but scanning them. I became a rose fanatic (rosarian).

Furthermore I was charmed by a hilariously funny old man called Erskine McPherson, who behind his pleasant demeanour knew his roses.

I am now the oldest member of the organization and I fully lack McPherson’s charm. I am losing interest in going to the meetings like the one today at Van Dusen’s Floral Hall. But I cannot give up on the goodies and the tea and coffee.

My interest in roses, early on, branched out into their history and the significance of their names. Since 2001 when I first started scanning the plants in my garden I have accumulated thousands of rose scans.

Today I will take a scan of Rosa sericea ssp. omiensis var. pteracantha which has been in bloom now (ectremely rare as roses will bloom at the end of May) for five days. Since I am the only one in the society who has this rare species rose (the only one with four petals as the species roses have five), the presence of my scan (scanned today) and the cut rose I scanned in a little vase next to it will not generate any questions or comments.

We are living in a world where pictures and photographs are seen (scrolled)  in phones but actual photographs are never held in hands. Few print now.

I am sure that McPherson would at the very least make a small comment and smile.

 A Fiddling Surprise

I wrote about my current fiddling with my scanner and negatives in my oficina - link above. I want to add another element. Yes it is pleasant for me to sit down and print in a well-lit office with a strong cup of me next to me. I am not breathing caustic darkroom fumes. I should have died a long time ago because I often used the carcinogen Kodak Selenium Toner.

The additional pleasure is for me to print, sign it and slip it into a protective plastic sleeve and (most important give it to someone as a gift). Thanks to my Rosemary’s financial skills I no longer need the money. Some might say that if you don’t sell your work you cannot call yourself an artist. Of this I simply do not give a damn.

It is enough of a reward to see that smile when I place a photograph in a person's hands and (most important) not show them an image on my phone. In this century we are forgetting the beauty of a physical object you can hold.

What you see here is the print I made of Rosemary which I purposely scanned with the plastic sleeve. It made little difference.