Thursday, June 08, 2006




Sometime at the end of 2005 I received a call from architect Dale Rickard who is a member of an interesting and esoteric group called the Urbanarium Society. The society had a project that involved the photography of Vancouver roof gardens or gardens over the street level that were mostly semi-private. Many years ago I swore I would never use a 4x5 inch film camera and suffer seeing the world upside down. I have enough problems with the right and left of my dyslexia. I asked Rickard if he wanted photographs that had beautifully corrected perspective. I was pleased by his answer, "No we want something edgy." I accepted and edgy became dreamy as that's the overall look of most of the pictures I took with a couple of swivel lens panoramic cameras (the Russian Horizont can be seen, right) and Kodak b+w infrared film. Halfway through the project involving 13 gardens, I obtained a Noblex 175 which is a 120 film format swivel lens panoramic camera that shoots a slide that is 50mm by 175mm. The Urbanarium society, made up of landscape architects, architects and city planners, who love this city provided me with wonderful feedback and worked very hard for the show Secret Gardens which opens tonight at the Pendulum Gallery. Those of you who may read this are invited.

The Pendulum Gallery