Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

A Sad Rebecca - Aida Without Elephants Or Camels

2008-05-15T21:52:00.000-07:00

It was only in the last years of her life when my grandmother Lolita was in her 70s that she was no longer able to sing. She had forgotten who she was. I remember that she came back from Egypt where she had visited her son (my uncle) Tony. When she deplaned she looked at me and I saw nobody there. Before that whenever anybody in our family or a friend got married Lolita was asked to sing at the wedding. Her signature song was Francisco Santiago's Ave María. It is only in the research of this blog that I have found out that Santiago was born in Santa María, Bulacan in the Philippines in 1919. I had thought Santiago a Spaniard. Well into her late 60s my grandmother's soprano (with coloratura she always told us) was clear and beautiful.

She had wanted to be an opera singer. Her father (who had been a baker in Spain) said that people of social standing were never opera singers. But Lolita's sister Buenaventura was allowed to continue in her career as a concert pianist of note in the Philippines. I often wonder what would have happened if my grandmother had followed her star. Seen here is a picture of her in the early 20s when she (a recent widow) and her three children arrived in New York. By the end of the 20s Lolita was working for Winthrop, a pharmaceutical company. Her singing star had dimmed.

From Lolita I learned quite a bit about opera. I might have learned more if I had really been interested. But my ears would open when she told me of performances of Aida at the Met in New York that had live elephants and camels. She told me of going to a theatrical presentation of Ben Hur that had a fight involving galleys at sea (on stage!). Lolita would sing arias for me and some of her favourites were from Aida.

It has been a strange two months going with Rebecca to Opera Sushi after her Wednesday ballet class. The selection of operas on DVD at the restaurant are limited so we have been watching Aida in different stages but somehow (while we saw the beginning and the end) we had never seen the triumphant march until yesterday evening. In this 1989 Met version with Plácido Domingo as Radames, Sherrill Milnes as Amonastro, April Millo as Aida and Dolora Zajick as Amneris there are no elephants or camels. But Rebecca did brighten up when the beautiful white horses (with plumes) pranced across the stage.

I was struck by melancholy and I watched Rebecca's sad eyes. Her father had forgotten and not taken her last Friday to her ballet's school recital. All her dance mates had been given gold medals. She did not get a medal and her ballet teacher was furious. I grieved at a 10 year-old having to be unhappy. I imagined my grandmother singing the arias from Aida and Rebecca listening rapt at Lolita's performance. I wonder what it is that Rebecca will do some day. Will she be a dancer? A pianist? Or will she end up at a boring job and the very spirit that now shines through her eyes will be muted? At 10 I had no idea of these things. In this 21st century does one have to worry and make decisions much earlier?

I take heart in the knowledge that one of my favourite Vancouver modern dancers, Katy Harris-McLeod, right, did many things in her early life including tree planting and only decided to be a dancer when she was 27. I really did not become a photographer until I came to Vancouver in 1975. I was 33.

Shoulder To Shoulder Gardening & The No Haircut Haircut

2008-05-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

IN 1988, two years into our new house with garden, I remember Hilary was studying on the lawn. I was excited as I was taking pictures with my large RB-67 mounted on a tripod. There was a view under the hawthorn tree with tulips and a hosta that was specially handsome. I asked Hilary to take a look through the viewfinder. Her answer was terse, "I am not interested in your garden." And that was that. Perhaps I am trying to get even by giving Rebecca (and recently, Lauren) potted roses, hostas and a rare Rhododendron 'Golfer'. Rebecca tends to her back patio garden and in the spring I show up with bigger pots to transplant the roses. We prune them together. I bring good dirt and some manure. To induce (so they say) new basal shoots on the roses I bring a mixture of magnesium sulphate (epson salts) and alfalfa meal.

My guess is that Rebecca's neighbourhood friends must think her strange to have her own garden. The irony here is that my mother gardened and I played a lot in our Buenos Aires garden. I climbed the many plum trees to feast on the fruits but avoided eating from my father's kaki (persimmon) tree. But I had strung a rope from the tree to a wraught iron fence and I zoomed down using a y-shaped branch. While I was too young to be really interested in the garden my mother's plants registered in my memory so we have iris and calla lillies in our Athlone garden to remember my Buenos Aires garden. There are other plants but they will not grow in our climate.

So now as Rosemary and I prepare the garden for the Ballet BC House and Garden Tour for the other weekend I think of my mother and how she would love to discover our plants and what she would feel on seeing Rebecca and Lauren play in it. Their mother, Hilary is interested in medicinal herbs but the garden still does not seem to faze her. I might have to wait for her to buy her first house and hope that it has a garden so that I can feel that somehow this family garden interest is being transfered.

I also think of my friend W. George Schmid. I wrote about him here. Rosemary is stressed and worried. We brag that our garden is a "shoulder to shoulder" garden. George came up with the term that defines a garden with beds that show no dirt as plants lean on each other and weeds are supressed. Will it be, indeed, a shoulder to shoulded garden by May 24th and 25th when we open the garden? We hope that yesterday and today's rain coupled with the coming sun will make our plants stretch out.

Preparing a garden for an opening is much like getting a no-haircut haircut. You want to make the garden look manicured but not manicured recently. Will I mow next Thursday? Time will tell.

On Mexican Pines, Things Evergreen & Cedars Not From Lebanon

2008-05-13T09:12:00.001-07:00

Since 1986 I have purchased many dwarf conifers and conifers for the garden. At first my inexperience meant that I had several coniferal deaths. Many of the formerly called chamaecyparis (false cypresses) which have been recently promoted to cupressus (the cypress family)and many pinus (pines) did not like the winter wet and relatively poor drainage of my garden. But many survived and even thrived.

Some years ago I purchased three Abies koreana 'Nana' or dwarf Korean firs at a UBC plant sale. The moniker nana was incorrect as the three grew quite tall and the tallest is now 9 ft high.

Korean Fir, (Abies koreana; 구상나무, Gusang namu in Korean) is a fir native to the higher mountains of South Korea, including Jeju-do island.

What is startling about this conifer is that the underside of the leaves (conifers have leaves even if those needles don't look like them) are silvery white so that in a wind the whole tree shimmers. Startling, too are the upright cones which in spring can be blue, purple of light green.

When I married Rosemary some 40 years ago she used to smile when we purchased a Canadian Christmas tree every year. In Spanish all conifers are pinos or pines. The more discerning might know the existence of abetos (abies or firs) or the existence of the extremely Mexico City pollution tolerant juníperos or junipers. Thujas (Western Red Cedars) true cedars and other exotic conifers are all but unknown. All conifers are pinos!

In our travels through Mexico in our VW beetle we saw many pines. In the mountains of Oaxaca, in Xalapa, Veracruz and elswhere. It was only here in Vancouver just a few years ago that I learned that Mexico is home to the greatest variety of pine species in the world.

It was also in Vancouver that I found out that the Western Red Cedar is not a cedar but a Thuja and that the one in my garden is a Thuja plicata and is not related to cedars but to the pine family. Furthermore I found out that the Douglas Fir is not a fir or (in the proper botanical name an abies) but a pseudo hemlock. Because a Douglas Fir looks somewhat like a hemlock (Tsuga) it is botanically called a Pseudostuga and are all part of the pine family. The useless fact to remember is that a cedar fence is really not a cedar fence (Western Red Cedar or Thuja plicata) and that a true cedar or cedrus is a conifer family from Europe. I have several true cedars in my garden and most are weeping cedars or Cedrus deodara .

Also salient, in my opinion, is the knowledge that one should never have a roof with cedar shingles. Years ago when I visited veteran broadcaster Jack Webster in his Saltspring Island retreat he started our barbecue dinner fire with cedar shingles.

As a parting shot I would like to rectify the idea that all conifers are evergreen. There are several that are not. I wrote about one of them here. You can see a branch of Larix kaempferi and its cones here alongside the Abies koreana's cone and a branch showing the silver underside.

Spooning With Rosemary In The Garden

2008-05-12T10:21:00.000-07:00

While I have always enjoyed the comfort of spooning I didn't know what it was called until recently. Yesterday Rosemary and I had an intense day in the garden getting it ready for the Ballet BC Home & Garden Tour 2008.

We each work in our areas but we meet to move a plant. She will hold it up so I can see where the roots are and I go at it with a spade. I dig a hole and while Rosemary places the plant in its new spot I fill a bucket with our pond's water to puddle in the plant to reduce the moving shock.

It is about now when my friend Donald Hodgson and I would talk hosta on the phone. Hodgson died a few months ago. He had a home wholesale hosta nursery in North Vancouver. He selected tried and true hostas like Hosta montana 'Aureomarginata', Hosta 'Halcyon', Hosta 'Gold Standard' and such stalwart and beautiful species hosta like Hosta nigrescens. He lovingly grew them in large pots and then sold them to the best nurseries in town. Whenever I had a garden tour I would go to his house and he made the exception of selling to me retail so I could "bulk" up some of my hostas that were not doing too well or to fill empty areas of the garden.

We talked hosta and we talked on how lovely the garden got to be now when you could discern change and growth from one day to the next. The hosta leaves as the plants unfurled are a tender green and pristine with no slug holes. The first thing Rosemary and I do in the morning is to run to the bathroom window and look out into the back garden.

Last night we were exhausted and getting into bed and out of bed (perhaps to get a mug of tea) brought groans as our pained limbs protested movement. No amount of hand cream lessened the roughness of our hands.

But as I gazed upon this tiny flower, Omphalodes cappadocica a plant I would not have noticed anywhere I realize that Rosemary and I spoon in our garden. We fit into each other's tastes and somehow the end result, our garden, is definitely ours.

Lettuce, Mother's Day, Major Dundee & Begoña Palacios

2008-05-11T09:54:00.000-07:00

A seemingly unlikely confluence of events led to today's scanning of a small bit of lettuce. The bit of lettuce is what was left from Rosemary's lettuce, carrot, tomato and celery salad from last night's mother's day dinner. Perhaps it was precipitated when I opened the refrigerator this morning and the remnants of the salad, in a bowl we purchased in Málaga many years, ago fell out and broke.

It all began a couple of weeks ago when Rosemary and I watched in the Turner Classic Movies channel, Sam Peckinpah's 1965 Western Major Dundee with Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, Santa Berger, James Coburn, Slim Pickens and Jim Hutton. Ben Johnson and Warren Oates, two future staples of Peckinpah movies played understated (most uncharacteristic) roles.

And there was also Mexican actress Begoña Palacios.

One of the most often repeated and comforting scene of Peckinpah's Mexican Westerns (The Wild Bunch is certainly another) is a group of rough and tough gringos entering a Mexican village. They soon befriend the villagers and there is a party. There is a cheerful farewell in the end. Nasty Mexican Federales or in this case French imperial forces take revenge on the poor villagers for helping the gringos.

As I watched this fully restored (all the cuts were reinstated in a movie that caused so much uproar because of the director's overbudget and alcoholism) I thought of the fact that Heston went without pay to convince the producers to keep backing the production of the film. But I became melancholic and nostalgic when I noticed Mexican actress Begoña Palacios who convincingly (most demurely) competed with the much more voluptuous Santa Berger who proudly showed her cleavage while strategically pushing her Mexican rebozo to one side.

Begoña Palacios married Sam Peckinpah an extraordinary three times. Here is a short biography:

Begonia Palacios, in spite of being a well-known actress in her native Mexico, was better known as the three-time wife of director Sam Peckinpah. The actress and the director first met when Peckinpah cast her in his 1965 film, Major Dundee. The duo shared an extremely volatile relationship, as evidenced by their unusual three marriages. Palacios and Peckinpah remained close, despite their differences, until his death in 1984 -- he was reportedly journeying to see her when he was stricken, on her birthday no less, with his fatal heart attack. Palacios died in early 2000 and her ashes were scattered off the shores of Malibu, CA, the same location where Peckinpah's ashes were strewn. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide

The next event that has led to the bit of lettuce happened yesterday in the afternoon when Rebecca asked me to play any music of my choice. I chose Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait directed by Maurice Abravanel and the Utah Symphony Orchestra. The piece was narrated by Charlton Heston. Rebecca had never heard of Heston, Ben Hur, A Touch of Evil and, much less, Major Dundee. We will have to see Ben Hur together. But Rebecca did comment that Heston's voice was most interesting.

For mother's day dinner the chicken I was making in the outdoor barbecue had to be finished in the oven when the gas was exhausted. I placed the chicken with the basting liquid in a pyrex dish and the result was a resounding and juicy success. After a dessert of apple flambé (with Pernod, butter and cream) we watched Rossini's Ghost from the series called The Composers' Specials . When Hilary was about to leave she said, "This has been an unusual mother's day."

I thought about it overnight.

Begoña Palacios would have been called "a lechugita" (a small head of lettuce) by Mexicans to describe her vuluptuous and lively nature. But better still she would be called "a mamacita" (little mother). Mexicans have a complex relationship with motherhood, and with diverse meanings of the word. This complex relationship was best explained by Mexican writer/poet/diplomant Octavio Paz in his book (1950) El Laberinto de la Soledad (The Labyrinth of Solitude).

It all began when Doña Marina (as Spaniards affectionately call her) or La Malinche, the disdainful Mexican epithet "sold out" her country by translating for Hernan Cortez and then complicating it even more by bedding the conquistador and having a son. To this day a "malinchista" is a Mexican who prefers foreign goods.

Mexicans have some strange expressions related to mothers and motherhood. "My mamacita" can be an endearing term describing one's dear mother or in most cases one's dear mistress. A mamacita is a lechugita , a beautiful young or not so young woman. When Rosemary would walk home from teaching English to our apartment in Mexico City's Zona Rosa, bricklayers and construction workers would shout "¡Mamacita!" at her. I don't blame them. Rosemary had beautiful legs and wore extra short mini skirts. That she was close to 8 months pregnant at the time had no bearing.

A papacito (or little father) has nothing to do with fatherhood and all to do with a man who is cool and can pick up women. A papacito has many mamacitas.

The most complex term involving the word mother in Mexico is madre or mother. "Te voy a dar en la madre." which losely translates to "I will give it to you in your mother, " means, "I am going to fu-- you over, and get even with you." Octavio Paz mentions the curious fact that this fictitious place, this abstract place (the mother in you that I am going to get at) is nowhere and cannot be found anywhere. Mexican's will commonly utter, "Me dieron en la madre,", when they suffer a financial problem, had an automobile accident or failed a test in school.

Yet "a toda madre" (sort of all mother) is used to denote something fantastic. ¡Vancouver "es a toda madre! would mean that Vancouver is a happening place. But "no vale madre" (it's not worth a mother) means that something is worthless and shoddy. To confuse it further, "Vancouver es un lugar padre," (Vancouver is a father place) means the same thing as !Vancouver es a toda madre!

Such is the alternate almost obscene meaning of madre and mamacita that Mexicans reserve another variant "madrecita" (little mother) which has not sexual meaning and is pure long and sufferning and kind mother.

Such is the Mexican obsession with motherhood that the ultimate insult is to state that your oponent should have sex with his mother. The perennial American (Frank Sinatra used it a lot) finish to a song "ta, ta, ta-ta-ta - tá-tá" means just that. For many years Mexicans would honk their car horns to insult those with lesser motoring skills. Expensive fines were instituted by the authorities to counter this vehicular obscenity. So ever-so-quick Mexicans simply honk their horn twice, tá, tá. Everybody knows this is not an endearing motherly term.

And yes, Begoña Palacios in Major Dundee, is a lechugita, a mamacita. Her performance is "a toda madre" and Charlton Heston "les dió en la madre a los Franceses" soundly defeated the Frenchies. In fact since mother's day in Mexico is always celebrated on May 10th and the Mexican defeat of the imperial French forces in Puebla happened on May 5th, the Puebla holiday is sometimes called "La Media Madre" or "half mother".

¡Begoña Palacios, mamacita, mamacita!

Arts Umbrella - Essentially - Pure Dance

2008-05-10T09:53:00.000-07:00

Lauren, Rebecca (both dressed to the teeth) and I attended the Arts Umbrella Dance Company Season Finale last night at the Vancouver Playhouse. I have gone to these before with Rebecca and it features the Senior Company Dancers and the Apprentice Company Dancers. As a special treat that happened because of an exchange program the evening also featured Joffrey Ballet School Dancers (no less!) and a finale, Samsara (choreographer Margo Sappington) that combined both dance companies and brought down the house with intensity, music and costumes to die for.

Rebecca and I go to a lot of dance and Lauren is becoming an aficionado, too. We know what we like. I find it curious that even if you compare this yearly Arts Umbrella tradition to any other dance performance by any company, be it Canadian or international, only the Arts Umbrella performance seems to be, essentially, intense and pure dance. Only La La La Human Steps from Quebec leaves me as exhausted and satiated.

Last night was no exception. At a pre-performance reception were Rebecca chatted with Emily Molnar and Tiko Kerr, we were asked when we felt most alive. The question was immediately answered that dancers, the Arts Umbrella dancers, feel most alive when they dance. That made me think as I am too self-concious when I dance the Argentine tango to feel alive. I am much too worried if I am doing the right steps.

I would say that I feel most alive during a portrait session. There is that instance when I know I have my shot. And I know I can quit at that moment and not fret anymore. Attempting to take that photograph with fewer and fewer exposures (in an age of digital regurgitation) is specially satisfying.

In a number before the intermission, Grosse Fugue (by dazzling Toronto choreographer Roberto Campanella) in a beginning with absolute silence (Beethoven was to be later) Alex Burton and Alyson Fretz danced together. Burton's profile would have launched a thousand ships of Amazon women. Burton and Fretz, for a few moments, were the ultimate Romeo and Juliet falling in love. The sexuality, intense as it felt to me, was romantic, classy, tender. I felt like running up to Ballet BC's John Alleyne (sitting in the back row) and saying, "Mr Alleyne, choreograph your version of Romeo and Juliet. You have your dancers here, and now."

I was alive.

There were some moments of retrospection for me. I wonder why Rebecca and her powers that be do not understand that women like dancer and choreographer Emily Molnar, and dance director Artemis Gordon (seen here with Alex Burton) instill in dancers a way of life that will make them better persons even if they ultimately do not become dancers. They learn unflinching commitment and a desire to do their best in a world that is bocoming more and more a world of mediocrity and incompetence.

Rebecca and I missed Nina Davies our most favourite and flexible dancer. She has back problems (at this moment unresolved). I have watched Davies dance for some four years and I have chatted with her and her mother Kitty. At age 16 she is the very model of the girl I would like Rebecca in some way to resemble. But let me end with a humorous note. Artist Tiko Kerr introduced a gentleman to her. "Rebecca, this is my husband Craig." A few moments later, a puzzled Rebecca asked me, "How can that be?" And then she immediately said, "Oh, yes I understand now."

I was alive.

The Three Musketeers, Sartre & A Bear Named Winnie

2008-05-09T01:09:00.000-07:00

I first met up with the "Three Musketeers" (my name for them), Kim Collier, Jonathan Young and Kevin Kerr, founding members (1996) of the Electric Theatre Company in 2001. I was comissioned by them to take pictures of the actors involved in a play adapted by Vancouver's Carmen Aguirre from Jorge Amado's novel, Donna Flor and Her Two Husbands. The project also involved Argentine artists Nora Patrich and Juan Manuel Sanchez. On opening night, in the reception are of the East Vancouver Cultural Centre, Patrich, Sanchez and I had photographs, paintings, sketches with photographs and other variations that showed the characters of the play in their roles. It was the Electric Theatre Company that probably innaugurated the East Vancouver Cultural Centre tradition of having at least one production per year (be it a play or a dance performance) featuring full nudity. In fact it was Dona Flor's first husband (Ty Olson) who made the Vancouver theatre audience receptive to having a man on stage nude and dangle his parts for most of a performance. Carmen Aguirre was Dona Flor. She shed her clothes for the last act.

I dealt with them in 2003 for The Fall . It is hard to distinguish who acts, who directs and who writes the company's plays. I do believe that Kevin Kerr does not act. He is a playwright who won the Governor General's Literary Award in 2002 for his play Unity (1918) but both Collier and Young (married to each other, photo above, left) write, act and Collier directs. All three happily co-write many of the company's plays.

In 2006 the company staged Studies in Motion written by Kevin Kerr (right) that was based on the story of photographer Eadweard Muybridge. This wonderful play (nudity but this time at UBC's Frederic Wood Theatre) broke new grounds as all movement was choreographed by Kidd Pivot's Crystal Pite. After seeing this play I thought that theatre would never be quite same again for me. And that has been so. The Electric Theatre Company keeps challenging this concept of what theatre should or can be.

Last night Rosemary and I were challenged but entertained in the company's performance of Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit. Both Rosemary and I had read the play many times but we have never seen it performed. No subsequent staging that we might see elsewhere will be able to match the bells, the whistles and the sheer technical wizardry of this production. And Kim Collier's direction was tight and to the point. Stuff had to be edited out. As an example when I spotted Crystal Pite I asked her, "How would you have choroegraphed this play? How would you have prevented the actors from ever blinking their eyes?" With a smile she answered, "I couldn't have." So any mention that the protagonists can never close their eyes was taken out from Paul Bowles' translation.

The three actors who are in "The Room", Laara Sadiq, Andy Thompson and Lucia Frangione show no redeeming qualities (terrific acting) and thus show why they are in hell. I never felt sorry for them and I now understand why my theology class before lunch in my Catholic boarding school in Texas seemed like hell. As we would say in Spanish, it was an antesala del infierno or ante room to hell. The class seemed like it would never end.

But it was Jonathan Young's performance as the valet that I enjoyed the best. Last year I thought his Ruby Slippers paticipation in Trout Stanley was the best performance by a male actor that I have seen in years. And Rosemary still talks about his acting in the company's 2004 play, Palace Grand (picture here of Young smoking a joint).

Young is a handsome actor. But he is slim and almost as small as Collier. He can (I am sure) almost make himself disappear so you won't notice him. And he rarely yells. You pay attention because you want to listen to him. In No Exit, while I didn't give a damn what happened to the three in the room I felt anguish for Young's valet who it would seem will have to spend an eternity dealing with people of no consequence. A worse hell I cannot imagine.

By accident I saw the CBC film (2004) A Bear Named Winnie on TV over the weekend. It is based on the true story of a Canadian soldier, enroute to World War I from Winnipeg, who adopts an orphaned bear cub at White River Ontario. It is named Winnie (for Winnipeg) and eventually ends up at the London Zoo where it became the inspiration for A.A.Milne's Winnie The Pooh stories. He is fussed over by two men. One of them is Jonathan Young who plays a veterinarian soldier called Macray. It was in this film (a film that shows that the CBC can deliver good Canadian goods when it wants to) that I noticed Young's chameleon qualities. But it was this line in the film that stopped me and made me notice, "I know everything, I have done nothing."

There is more. The three musketeers met while studying theatre at Langara's Studio 58. Carmen Aguirre studied there and has written plays for it including a most entertaining adaptation of Argentine writer Julio Cortazar's story The Rules of the Game.

A few weeks back I photographed Antony Holland who was the founder of Studio 58. His latest project is minimalist theatre. He believes that strong plays don't need staging or props. He would perhaps not approve of the Electric Theatre Company's No Exit. I would only say to this gentle man that more than anybody in Vancouver he is singly responsible for the machinations of his students. They will perhaps some day return to his minimalism. Meanwhile he should take some credit for the sheer brilliance of those whom he has inspired.

Luckily for the other theatre companies of our city, these three musketeers are only three. Were they four there would be no competition.

Addendum

Hey everyone! Just wanted to let you all know that I will be doing a public reading of Blue Box, my new play, during The New Play Festival, which takes place during Magnetic North, the national theatre festival being held in Vancouver this year.

Blue Box is a one-woman autobiographical dark comedy about sex and politics. Can there be sex without politics? Can there be politics without sex? The play takes place in the Third and First worlds, from the eighties into the new millenium, during revolutionary and post-revolutionary times.

Here's the info:

Blue Box, written and performed by Carmen Aguirre, directed by Brian Quirt.

A Nightswimming commission.

When: Wednesday, June 11th, at 9pm

Where: Playwrights Theatre Centre Studio at Festival House on Granville Island. 1398 Cartwright Street, a few doors down from The Waterfront Theatre.

Admission: $5 at the door.

Would love to see you all there! Please pass it on.... Carmen Aguirre:)

A Nostalgia For Women In Skirts & Dresses

2008-05-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

It is vivid and indelible in my memory. I was 7 or 8 years old and I was with my mother in a colectivo (a Buenos Aires bus). So vivid is my memory that I remember that we were on the fashionable Calle Esmeralda. A woman got on the bus with a little creature in tow. He or she was wearing a dress but he or she had very short hair (a crew cut). I could not decide if this was a boy dressed as a girl or some kind of strange girl. When I was that age the difference between the sexes was obvious. Boys wore short pants and men wore long pants. Girls and women wore dresses or skirts. When my mother took me to see a film with Katherine Hepburn I was most confused. Here was a woman who almost had a man's voice. And she wore pants. Not long after a little American girl came to my house to play and asked me if I wanted to see it. It was then that all my confusion about the sexes began.

Now that the 20th century has slipped into the 21st it seems obvious that skirts and dresses will go the way of Body by Fisher.

That is why I long for the nostalgia of my past in Argentina where in my imagination (perhaps) women were women and I was never confused (except for that little girl who must have had very thin hair). I can relive that nostalgia by glancing through the files of Linda Lorenzo.

This Argentine beauty posed for Juan Manuel Sanchez, Nora Patrich and me in my studio or in Nora's house for over a year. We drank mate, spoke Argentine Spanish and relived a life when everything was in its proper (for us) place.

Juan asked Linda to pose with a guitar. I was appalled at his cliché on how a guitar resembles a woman. But Linda posed and I snapped my picture and joked with Juan. Now that Juan and Nora are divorced and live in separate aparments in Buenos Aires with new partners I would be prepared to photograph whatever cliché Juan could cook up just to share the comfort and joy of gazing at a woman who is woman.

On Friday I am going to the the end of the school year performance of the Arts Umbrella senior and junior dance companies at the Vancouver Playhouse with Lauren and Rebecca. I have expressly asked them to wear dresses. Rebecca was reluctant but she agreed. What joy!

A Nostalgia For Women In Skirts, Dresses & Nora Patrich

2008-05-08T08:55:00.000-07:00

Some years back I spent lots of time at Juan Manuel Sanchez and Nora Patrich's house. My wife started suspecting something and asked me bluntly. I responded in a way she was not expecting and I wrote about it here. Rosemary then accepted my daily mate journey to Nora's and our constant telephone communication. Rosemary knew it was good for my soul and for my artistic morale.

But these good things ended when Nora and Juan divorced and both moved to Buenos Aires. Juan has an younger mistress and Nora has found a man in politics who shares the leftist leanings of her "causa". Nora and Juan don't see each other and rarely communicate.

When I have Rebecca in the car and I am taking her home the route passes by Nora and Juan's old house. One of Nora's daughters still lives there. Rebecca notices Juan and Nora's paintbrushes (in bottles) by the windows and a couple of little Argentine flags. Rebecca knows and doesn't ask. She knows how I miss them because she misses them, too. She also misses sipping the hot and bitter mate, the smell of paint and the "alegría" of our conversations. Juan said he would not attempt to teach Rebecca to draw and paint until she were 11. Juan believed children should be allowed to paint with freedom and without adult restrictions until that age. It would be about now that Rebecca would have walked the two blocks for her lessons with Juan.

Nora was a different kettle of fish. She was impulsive yet calculating. I always made fun of her leftist philosophy while dependant on her Visa card to get Airmiles points. I called it "causa de tacita de thé" or a leftist cause while holding the delicate tea cup.

As a young teenager on her way to school Nora would pass by the taller (studio) of the famous Grupo Espartaco artist (Grupo Espartaco was a group of Argentine painters who protested the military juntas of Argentina with mural art) Juan Manuel Sanchez and she would spy at the paintings. In the mid 90s after marrying two previous men she finally married Juan Manuel Sanchez. She brought him to Vancouver where Juan, not able to speak the language became a penguin the arctic.

He was out of his element. As he looked out of the window of his taller on to Douglas Park he felt alienated in not being able to understand the game being played. I tried to explain but Juan never did understand or want to understand what baseball was. Juan is back to the city he loves but after having experienced some the the benefits of Canada and Vancouver like our health system or the fact that electricity is constant and communication dependable he is now perhaps a polar bear in the antarctic. Nonetheless he is able to walk down from the taller to the nearby pizzería El Cuartito and savour a porción with his beloved moscato (a very cold and very sweet wine that tastes like fine grape juice).

As time passes my disdain for of Nora's causa and her constant praise for the Cuban health system and her criticism of Bush (Bush was singlehandedly the cause of global warming) is fading. I think it was all hot air. Nora had suffered terrible face cancers and our Canadian health system had been kind to her. She and Juan had a wonderful show of joint murals (painted in my studio on large rolls of canvas) that went from one town to another in all the major provinces of Argentina. The tab was picked up by "the culturally disadvantaged" (as Nora and Juan often complained) Canadians. It was the Canadian embassy in Buenos Aires that promoted their art. The Argentine economy was much too poor and in disarray to fund culture.

And so I miss Juan but I also miss Nora. My bitterness at their ruining of my artistic life by leaving me alone is fading a bit and I am beginning to seek out other outlets. But that does not prevent me from basking in the memory of those wonderful times.

Here you see Nora Patrich and Linda Lorenzo in Nora's living room. That smile! NOra had props. "I need a violin," I would tell her and she would fish one out from somewhere. She had a collection of fans and old dresses. Dresses that made Linda look fabulous. Being in Nora's living room was inspiration enough for anything. Nora had some original Goya engravings on her wall, a Picasso on another. A whole wall housed art books in Spanish. The other photograph shows Nora's painting in her paradoxical style. She had a causa yet her paintings never showed what was wrong with the world. Her women seemed to be ideal women who had no cause and just stared out of the canvas in wonder at the beauty of our world. The position of her woman's hands represents the female sexual organ. Nora was very frank in her discussion of sex and political correctness was not part of her causa. The photograph attempts to display a Borgesian obsession with the labyrinth.

Linda is wearing a Mexican rebozo that was given to my mother by her sister Dolly in 1951. It is made of raspy and rough cotton and the red dye is a brilliant vegetable dye. It smells of the Indian sandalwood chest I store it in.

And below is a photograph that combines all the paintings and the labyrinths we could muster.

Buddy Selfish & His Saviours - A Taco On The Barber Chair

2008-05-07T10:44:00.000-07:00

I know very few people in Vancouver who have a memory for buildings that are gone or for buildings that have been modified. A pleasant exception is my friend architect Henry Hawthorn.

Few who might find themselves at the corner of Fir and West Broadway would suspect that the strange white building that is now the Philippino bakery Goldilocks (the largest bakery chain in the world), used to house est (Erhard Seminars Training). Encounter sessions would be far livelier with Magnolia macapunú ice cream on the side.

In 1982 I photographed a revival rockabilly band Buddy Selfish & His Saviours in what for many years seemed to be a permanent fixture of our city. An Italian gentleman (an Italian version of Dorian Gray as he always looked the same) had a barbershop on the corner of Commercial Drive and 1st Avenue. Perhaps only two or three years ago it became a Mexican fast food restaurant (a very good one).

When I stop at this corner I think of the Ian Tiles (sitting on the barber chair) and the other members of the band. On the far right is Colin Griffiths (ex-UJ3RK5), then Bob Pettersen, Nick Jones (ex-Pointed Sticks) and Andy Grafitti (ex-UJ3RK5).

Karethe Linnaae - Knife Out Of Water

2008-05-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

Some years ago I read a book of short stories by Milan Kundera. One of the stories has remained in my memory.

A young married couple living in the former Eastern Block country in Europe have to plan their vacation ahead. They finally get permission and they are driving to their resort destination. They are slightly bored so the woman suggests that they stop for gasoline and play a game. He is to gas up and then she will walk further on a pretend that she is thumbing a ride. He agrees. He picks her up and the game gets vicious when they say things to each other that they would otherwise have never said. He thinks she plays too easy, she thinks he is a sexist pig.

That story has remained in my memory because I associate it with a Polanski's classic 1962 film Knife in the Water. I saw it in the Israeli Cultural Institute in Mexico City sometime in 1964. In this film a couple on their way to a weekend escape in their boat, pick up a male hitchhiker and invite him to their boat. A rivalry insues for the attentions of the woman.

There is something European about the story and the film. While I have seen every film Charlotte Rampling (the quintessential European woman) I thought she was a fish out of water in the 1982 American film The Verdict with Paul Newman. Her "Europeaness" was diluted.

Norwegian film lighting technician Karethe Linnaae oozes European. Her accent is just right and her voice low enough to instantly alert you to her presence. She is the kind of woman that if you invite her to a bar/restaurant (the Railway Club on Dunsmuir, for example) men (and women) will ask me, "Who is she?" I can imagine a knife fight over her and Kundera would write a story about Karethe if he ever met her. He would write how she is a wrench in any mixture of men and how they will abandon all pretenses of fair play and gentlemanly behaviour to attract her attention.

While I have not seen her for a long while I remember her easy smile and her warmth. I am grateful to have met her.

Camellia x williamsii ‘Donation’

2008-05-05T10:02:00.001-07:00

It appreared in about 1941, raised by Colonel Stevenson Clark of Sussex, England, by crossing Camellia saluenensis with Camellia japonica ’Masayoshi’

I have written about camellias and this particular one here. When I look at camellias I think of my boarding school days at St. Edwards in Austin, Texas in the late 50s. The only woman on campus was an older and large black woman who worked in our cafeteria kitchen. Our only contact with members of the female sex where in the basketball and football games. The girls from the other side of the city, St Mary's attended and some of them were our cheerleaders. I was much too shy to talk to them (and Judy Reyes, below, in particular) and since I didn't know how to dance I rarely met any of them at our occasional sock hops in our basketball gym.

There was one woman (there were others, but I remember in particular this one) who knew the number of our pay phone at the end of our dormitory hall. Her name was Marion and she would call and we would talk to her for hours. She led us on (I would use a the term that was in vogue then, she was a p---- teaser ). She had a pleasant sexy voice and was never crude. She was a solace in those in-between days before they let us out for all day passes in town on Saturdays and Sundays.

I would first go to 6th Street where there was a pocket book store. After buying a Frank G. Slaughter pocket novel. The medical novels had lots of terrific sex in them. I did not feel guilty in reading them as my mother loved this author. And one title in particular, Dear And Glorious Physician was about St Luke even though there were lots of sexual shenanigans in Bithynia!

Then I would walk to the Stephen F. Austin Hotel on Congress Avenue and I would gaze (while spooning my favourite ice cream, vanilla with real cherry bits) on the lovely soda jerk who worked behind the soda fountain counter. She was blonde and I imagined she was Eva Marie Saint. I had fallen for her (and ignored Elizabeth Taylor's violet eyes) when I had seen Raintree County in the movie house, next door.

Camellias are like Marion and the soda jerk at the Stephen F. Austin. They dazzle, they promise but don't deliver. Camellias have all the promise of my roses that begin to bloom at the end of May. Some of my roses even resemble camellias. But they also deliver with scent. Many are remontant and don't just bloom and quickly fade away as camellias do.

But my camellias do offer me solace for those in-between days of May. Before my roses finally deliver.

Trampling Huns & Little Girl Hostesses

2008-05-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

One of the perils of opening one's garden to a tour is that even if I tell Rosemary that nobody is going to bother to look at the outside of the house she worries that people will do just that. Since we moved to our house on Athlone Street in 1986 we have only had our house painted once. And it was a nerve racking experience. The only way you can paint our house is to do so in the waning days of summer, after we simply say to ourselves, "Let the painters step on anything. The plants will come back next year." To paint our house or even approach a cosmetic "paint the flaws" approach now is at best a compromise. These cosmetic touches cannot be applied until the weather is warm enough and dry enough for the paint to stick. This means the plants (including delicate ferns and emerging hostas) will suffer the fearsome effects of our local Attilas who have no idea of their fragile nature.

Yesterday was one of the most stressful days in memory for us as our Bosnian Attila trampled back and forth while painting with finesse the peeling stucco that had been "gently" removed by his German Attila cohort with 2200psi. To be fair no painter that I know would have accepted such a job that involved placing ladders in almost dangerous angles when scaffolding should have been erected. Worst of all we could not spend much time with Rebecca who given no direction will end up dressing dolls on the computer or watching TV. Lauren, on the other hand stayed outside talking to our Bosnian Attila. He talks even when we are not nearby. Here he finally found his match and he warmed up to her. Considering that he is poised to be a grandfather by December this bodes well. He is gentle with children even if with us he complains of the working conditions, the cold , the rain and our impossible demands.

Lauren spent the day outside while asking me questions on absolutely everything. I kept thinking while showing much patience and restraint, "Go and talk to him."

But both Rosemary and I know that when the visitors from the home and gardens (one garden, ours!) Ballet BC tour come at the end of the month the garden will be as ready as it can possibly be. Both Rebecca and Lauren will be wearing dresses and, if weather permits, they will be barefoot. I will teach Lauren the names of some plants (Rebecca knows many already) and they will be our hostesses while se sit down and enjoy the hordes of visitors (anywhere between 1500 and 2000). Stressful times will be in the past and even though Rosemary said, "Never again," I am sure that if someone calls to ask us if we will open the garden next year...

C.C. Humphreys - Absolute Sword Player

2008-05-03T10:46:00.000-07:00

I have been re-reading Alexandre Dumas to satisfy my appetite for swashbuckler novels. Then I discovered Jack Absolute.

Former actor, schoolboy fencing champion and author (six novels and three plays) C.C. Humphreys was a few minutes late to my studio. He had decided to drive not walk. He was concerned he might be stopped on the way. He was bringing a cavalry sabre.

In 1987 in the opening night of the eighteenth-century comedy, Richard Sheridan's The Rivals in London, actor Humphreys played protagonist Jack Absolute, a young swashbuckler rake. In Humphreys 2003 novel, Jack Absolute , Jack goes to see the The Rivals and learns that Sheridan has stolen his name and made him the star of his comedy.

In Humphreys's third in the series, Absolute Honour (2006, the second was the 2004 prequel The Blooding of Jack Absolute ) Humphreys borrows back from Sheridan and incorporates part of the plot of The Rivals.

Canadian born, but British educated, Humphreys understands the importance of the Plains of Abraham in the making of Canada. In The Blooding of Jack Absolute Jack is a 16-year-old boy who fights in that battle. During his research Humphreys climbed up that back way to the Quebec City plains in training shoes. "It's not vertical but at 70 degrees it must have been difficult. Every time you place your foot it is treacherous and you slip. What would it have been like in boots, pack and musket? At the top there are two signs. The one in English stated that this was the path the British Light Infantry came up at two in the morning. The one in French hints that Wolfe snuck up and with superior naval power won the day. Which is bonks! The navy was not involved."

Humphreys the actor became obsessed with Absolute to create the protagonist of his novels. He also has played Hamlet enough times to find an equal attraction to the role. Of Hamlet he said to me, "It is the ultimate straight role. Whatever stuff you bring from your life, that's who Hamlet is on stage. It is a personal journey. It exposes a lot of your own things and stuff." In the Blooding of Jack Absolute Jack winters in a cave with a Mohawk called Até. He teaches him to read with the only book in hand, a cheap copy of Shakespeare's tragedy.

With lots of twists and turns, spies and sword fights(complex ones involving left handers), Humphreys satisfies my hunger for reading adventure. Now as a late Canadian citizen, I understand how the battle that made Canada was fought. I asked Humphreys what role a swachbuckler plays in the 21st century. "It is as ever it was. It is to give an example of someone who is engages in the pursuit of honour, justice and is prepared to risk all at the point of a sword to gain everything."

Humphreys has also published the novel The French Executioner (about the man who lopped off Anne Boleyn's head). For those who cannot wait for the next Jack Absolute they will have to wait longer. In October 2008 McArthur & Co. will be publishing Humphrey's novel about the true historical Dracula, Vlad: The Last Confession. Humphreys lives in Vancouver whith his wife and son. His website is: cchumphreys.com

© 2008 VLM/Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

Tuesdays With Morrie - The More Than Human Jazz Pianist

2008-05-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

Rosemary and I attended last night the opening performance of Mitch Albom and Jeffrey Hatcher's play Tuesdays with Morrie. It was an Arts Club Theatre Production on the Granville Island Stage. It was an exquisitely excruciating experience.

It was that much more excruciating for me because I had the pleasure of taking Antony Holland's (he plays Morrie to Warren Kimmel's Mitch) portrait, left, last Thursday. Holland was 88 on March 28th. When he faced my camera it was obvious that here was a man who is in full control of all of his faculties including a keen sense of humour and a phenomenal memory. The only flaw I could detect was an extraordinary sweet tooth. He is much younger than his 88 years.

To see Holland's character Morrie (who is suffering the terminally degenerative Lou Gehrig's disease) break down on stage and slowly descend from dancing, to using a walker, to sitting in a wheel chair, to having to use a reclining sofa and then further degenerating into the pallid emaciated old man who is bedridden was a tour the force for me.

This tour de force was equaled by Warren Kimmel's performance as an ambitious, cold, calculating sports writer who somehow by the end of the play breaks down (pushed by his mentor Morrie) and becomes a whole human being. He was so despicable that I even noticed his loathsome light brown Italian shoes. Had I met him on the street with him wearing those shoes I would have instantly disliked him. Such is the power of good acting.

Such is the power of good acting that the play brought to mind a favourite science fiction novel that I had read in the 60s called More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon. Somehow as Mitch broke down mentally while his mentor Morrie broke down physically that combination added to "more than human" and gave this depressing play (I laughed lots in the first act) a cathartic saving grace.

Curiously a play with such complexity of feelings had friend and VLM editor Bob Mercer and I wondering if Warren Kimmel was really playing that wonderful jazz piano. Mercer who probably told both his younger brothers that Santa Claus did not exist thought the piano playing was a recording. I was convinced that Kimmel's considerable acting abilities included playing a damn good jazz piano. So we asked an usher who told us, "I really was not here during the first 15 minutes (a patent lie) so I don't know. Kimmel is talented so he certainly could have been playing it." I was not satisfied so while waiting back stage to talk to Holland I asked the stage manager who answered, "I really cannot tell you as I have not noticed if he plays the piano. It is possible."

So I warned Holland how the two previous persons had been ambiguous in answering my question. I asked, "Does Kimmel really play that piano?" Holland looked at me directly (and in character, or was it out of character? I could not make up my mind.) and he told me.

Emily Molnar, Crystal Pite - Eisteinian Space & Time

2008-05-01T21:43:00.000-07:00

It has taken 65 years for my concept of space and time to change, even after having read here and there about Einsteinian time and space. It all suddenly changed for me some five years ago when Vancouver contemporary dancers Emily Molnar and Crystal Pite discussed space, time and movement in my studio.

The shortest definition of relativistic movement I have ever heard came from Molnar (35) who said, “Movement is the observer.” This means that from a position of rest we the observers can discern the movement of a dancer on stage. Of time Pite (37) said, “The ephemeral of dance exists only in the present movement. We are left with traces of movements that are gone as they are being created. As we carve space with our bodies they leave a ghost, the trail which affects our future moves and informs the observer of our past moves.” I then understood that those past moves are much like the contrails that high-flying jets leave in the sky.

In 1996 I photographed Crystal Pite who was leaving Ballet BC for William Forsythe’s Frankfurt Ballet. I had seen her Ballet BC farewell performance of her own work, Moving Day. I was amazed by her elegance and style but immediately saddened that I might not to see her dance again. In 1998 I photographed Emily Molnar who returned from the Frankfurt Ballet to assist John Alleyne’s direction of Ballet BC. Fortunately for us all Alleyne made her dance, too. In between, Pite and Molnar met and danced for two years in Frankfurt. Pite returned to Vancouver 6 years ago where she directs Kidd Pivot, her own dance company.

Rebecca, my precocious 10 year-old granddaughter with whom I attend as many ballet and modern dance performances as we can, may be well ahead of her lumbering grandfather. She has declared to me that her favourite Vancouver dancers are Crystal and Emily. We agree.

It was with Rebecca that I saw Pite do part of her full-length ballet for the Frankfurt Ballet called Field Fiction. On stage, assisted by the excellent Cori Caulfield, and dressed in a stylized military uniform she removed her Prussian type spiked helmet and inserted her head into a noose that hung from the ceiling. On her tiptoes she did an exquisite and alternately horrific interpretation of a man hanging. I can only imagine what the scope of the silence that followed this performance must have been when it premiered in Frankfurt. Behind me was Sylvain Senez, Ballet BC’s Ballet master whispered in my ear, “Crystal is the future of dance in Vancouver.”

When Molnar (she is striking at 5 ft 11in) entered my studio for her first picture in 1998 she quietly sat in a corner in a fetal position for 10 minutes before facing my camera. Since then, thanks to Molnar, Pite and the performances of some of William Forsythe’s works by Ballet BC I have come not only to appreciate why Forsythe’s choreography and his company were rated about best in the world but also why Molnar and Pite talk physics. Asked on how he pushes the boundaries of the form of dance Forsythe once said, “I don’t think so much of the body when we are doing this. We are thinking about ‘the thinking body’ or we’re trying to understand how the body thinks about its own presence.” Or the way the ever-succinct Molnar put it to me, “Dance requires the entire body and the mind.”

Molnar has her own company, Emily Molnar Dance. When possible I attend whatever performance of hers I can find. More often than not she is busy choreographing for companies in Europe and New York. I sometimes catch her rehearsing the senior dancers at Arts Umbrella on Saturdays. Her principal role performances for several of John Alleyne’s full-length works including The Faerie Queen and Scheherazade linger in my memory. On the rehearsal of the latter Rebecca first noticed her and insisted on meeting her. It was in Molnar’s solo performance of Speak choreographed for her by Margie Gillis that I finally fell hard for her. I had to photograph Molnar for a local publication and she offered to go through the whole performance (just for me!) so I could pick a dance move for the photograph. In such close proximity I learned how strenuous dance really is no matter how effortless a dancer makes it seem to be. I now sit in the front row for dance performances, as part of the rewards of watching dance is to be able to hear the dancers breathe. In retrospect when I think of Molnar and Speak and watching her long limbs I smile remembering what Pite says of her, “There is always this extreme quality of her movement. The extreme doesn’t come from her extremities, although the result is extreme. The extremity is internally motivated. The motivation comes from her core.”

For me watching Pite or Molnar dance (they have yet to dance together in Vancouver) puts other dancers with them at a disadvantage. Pite and Molnar stand out and the others just fade much in the same way as the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s dancers used to disappear for me when I watched Evelyn Hart dance.

The uniqueness of Pite’s and Molnar’s style is perhaps best explained by Molnar’s take on Pite. "She is an artist of the highest caliber. She is defining dance in the future. She has a movement understanding that is absolutely three-dimensional. You know it’s Crystal when she dances, whether you see her face or not. There is uniqueness, creativity and a sense of humour in her statements. There is a grounded articulation in her physicality. There is no one like Crystal, and what that is, is still evolving." While Crystal’s definition of Molnar involves lots of physics I can safely say that Sylvain Senez was only half right. The future of dance in Vancouver is not only Crystal Pite but Emily Molnar, too.

It is a special delight when either Molnar or Pite appear in one of my favourite Vancouver dance programs, Dances for a Small Stage . The restraints of a small stage are a problem when you consider that both Pite and Molnar agree that when you, for example, throw an arm out, the distance cast is infinite. For a while, I selfishly hope, that their movements do not exceed beyond the borders of our fair and doubly lucky Vancouver.

A Study In Blue - Redux

2008-04-30T12:35:00.000-07:00

I wrote about Rhododendron augustinii last year here. Again there is no doubt that this rhododendron is not blue but somehow when I photograph it is bluer. The flowers reflect ultra violet light and register more blue on colour film. The results with a digital camera would be the same as the camera sensors are also far more sensitive to ultra violet that we are.

There have been some other changes that I have been able to note here. In spite of people who think that plants are affected (emerge sooner or later, flower sooner or later) by weather it would seem this is not the case, at least not with this rhododendron that is performing on schedule. I posted the blog last year on May 15 but I am sure I took the picture of Rebecca more or less at the end of April. The new ones here of Rebecca and Lauren I took last Saturday, April 26.

The changes in question have to do with the two little girls. It would have been impossible to convince Lauren to have posed for me by the rhododendron in April 2007. This time around she insisted on being photographed. Last year and years before Lauren would blink as soon as she faced a camera. She is also extra sensitive to light and squints. The light last Saturday was overcast yet Lauren could not look up that much. But I was able to get many of pictures that capture an age (she is 5) when most little girls are bubly and happy. Her mother might even say, after she sees this picture of Lauren that she has come to her own. I would agree. Lauren is very sweet and a delight. A year ago she was not. She was a bit slow in learning how to talk. She has been slow at many other things. But she seems to have a formula which is to not do anything until she can do it well. She is like Greta Garbo. Unlike Rebecca who seemed to learn stuff gradually, she will talk and walk suddenly.

For some years I have been taking remarkable portraits of Rebecca not because I may have any special talent but because Rebecca has that face and she knows how to project it on to a camera. In last year's photograph by the rhododendron I can see an uncertainty, a sadness that I have not seen in other photographs.

In the photograph of Rebecca (right) I see an ackwardness with her body. And I think I know why. It is a little girl who is 10 but going on 15. It is an age of confusion. Meanwhile Lauren will pose for me knowing who she is in a perfect harmony with a life that does not have the complication of having to grow up, yet.

Raymond Lum, Eric Ambler - In Praise of Accuracy

2008-04-29T21:21:00.000-07:00

The warning message arrived on Monday, the bomb itself on Wednesday. It became a busy week.
The Care of Time, 1981, Eric Ambler

Last Tuesday I went to Focal Point to teach my perennial class The Contemporary Portrait Nude. I decided to take the B-Line bus which drops me off half a block from the school on 10th Avenue. The stop is right by a used books store. I always look in the window. I immediately noticed the Eric Ambler novel (sometimes called political thrillers), The Care of Time. I knew I was going to buy it for two reasons. I read any book by the English author who died in 1998 because he was my mother's favourite thriller writer. I may have been 15 when she handed me a copy of his A Coffin For Dimitrios. I re read it every few years it is that good. It begins:

A Frenchman named Chamfort, who should have known better, once said that chance was a nickname for Providence.

A Coffin for Dimitrios paved the way for my later appreciation of Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, John Le Carré and Graham Greene (in particular The Confidential Agent). The second and most important reason is that here was a novel by Ambler that I had not read. I opened the book and read the first incredible paragraph (above). I paid $4 for a first edition which is in reasonable shape. The photograph (seen here) of the author by photographer Stephen Cornwell graces the back cover.

This novel, about a ghost writer who has a good reason to dislike both the CIA and the Iraquis, has a relevance today. Consider the second paragraph:

The message came in an ordinary business envelope that had been mailed from New York but had no return address on it. Inside, folded in three, was one of those outsize picture postcards that are offered to tourists in some places nowadays. This one was of a hotel with palm trees and carried an ornate caption proclaiming that it was the Hotel Mansour, Baghdad, Republic of Iraq.

Yesterday afternoon I visited my friend, photographer Raymond Lum. As a graduate from LA's Art Center he is very much like all the other graduates of Art Center that I have met. This means that Ray is most concerned with accuracy and perfection. With the advent of digital photography the pictures on his monitor have no hint of colours that were not in the original scene that he saw before he photographed it. His portraits have neutral gray backgrounds, blue shirts are blue with no hint of purple and skin tones are real enough to almost be uncanny.

Ray made an uncharacteristic mistake when he told me, "The difference between shooting RAW and a jpg (two different methods of storing the information of a digital photograph) is that RAW images have richer colour." As I admired Ray's realistic portrait of a real estate agent (Plato might have called it an essence of the real estate agent) I answered back, "Ray, I like your portrait because it is accurate. I am not interested in richer colour. I am interested in accuracy." One of the reasons Ray gets this accuracy is that he does not depend on a DSLR (digital single lens reflex) but has a scanning back attached to his Hasselblad. The pristine image of the real estate agent is a whopping 20 megabytes.

Looking at Ray's accurate portraits (he spends a considerable amount of money and much effort in making sure his top-of-the-line LCD monitor is calibrated to his specifications at least once a month. Any picture that you see on his screen and one that he prints on his inkjet printer are virtually identical), I thought of the Acoustic Research ads of the early 60s that advertised a unique approach to sound. AR conducted a series of over 75 live vs. recorded demonstrations throughout the U.S. in which the sound of a live string quartet (The Fine Arts Quartet) was alternated with echo-free recorded music played through a pair of AR-3s. In this “ultimate” subjective test of audio quality, the listeners were largely unable to detect the switchovers from live to recorded, a strong testament to Acoustic Research audio quality. This was in an era before we began to boost bass, zing the higher frequencies and surround ourselves with sound or hear it inside our head from a little machine in our front pocket. A sense of loss in the original quality of sound has many an iPod owner docking the device into a tube amplifier that is supposed to uncompress the sound and return the original presence taken out during compression.

By the 80s, sound enhancement concepts had wandered off into the realm of photography. Film was made with punchy colours and increased contrast. There was slide film that gave people an artificial sun tan. It was advertised as having a warmer and rich colour. I had an admiration for the colour carbro process nude prints by Paul Outerbridge taken in the late 30s and 40s. Skin looked real. Instead of this accuracy we were fed high contrast and gloss by Cybachrome technology.

From his first 1936 novel The Dark Frontier to his 1991 Waiting for Orders Ambler wrote cool thrillers in which most of his protagonists were ordinary (in some cases colourless) people who more often than not accidentally got involved in situations that were completely beyond their control. One such man is Charles Latimer a lecturer in political economy who writes his first detective novel at age 35, called A Bloody Shovel. Latimer is the main protagonist of A Coffin for Dimitrios whose life changes when he meets (in Istanbul, naturally!) one of the most interesting and complex characters in thriller writing, Colonel Haki. The suave Colonel tells Latimer:

"I get all the latest romans policiers sent to me from Paris," he went on. "I read nothing but romans policiers. I would like you to see my collection. Especially I like the English and American ones. Al the best of them are translated into French. French writers themselves, I do not find sympathetic. French culture is not such as can produce a roman policier of the first order. I have just added your Une Pelle Ensanglantée to my library. Formidable! But I cannot quite understand the significance of the title." Latimer spent some time trying to explain in French the meaning of "to call a spade a bloody shovel" and to translate the play on words which had given (to those readers with suitable minds) the essential clue to the murderer's identity in the very title.

Much has been written on the excellence and richness of Patrick O'Brian's nautical novels. I, too have found them excellent and I have read the series twice. But this does not mean that I will forgo the enjoyment of C.S. Forrester's Hornblower novels. I find a telling connection between Forrester's Hornblower and Ambler's everyday men who rise to become heroes. I see a further link between Acoustic Research's (and Angel Records) penchant for accuracy and Raymond Lum's near obsession with the accuracy and neutrality of colour in his photographs.

It is almost impossible to understand what is in Hornblower's mind at any time because Forrester choses not to tell us. He does not colour or enrich the man with deep thought. It is there, but between the lines. The reader has to extract it. It is for this reason that Gregory Peck's performance as Hornblower is so perfect. We have to imagine everything in a glance or a pressing of lips. Ambler's description of Colonel Haki seems to be matter of fact but beneath it all is a man who is complex and scary. And much the scarier as we weigh him in our imagination.

I tell my students at Focal Point that unlike film photographers (as this one) they now have the power to record and display the colour and subtlety of human skin with a near perfection that was never there until now. So few of them take advantage or understand the gift they have.

Thankfully there are a few out there (Raymond Lum is one of them) who like Ambler, Forrester, and my Acoustic Research amplifier provide me with the richness (pardon me!) and the enjoyment of that which is plain and accurate.

The man standing in the shadow of the doorway turned up the collar of his overcoat and stamped his numb feet gently on the damp stones.
First paragraph, Cause For Alarm, 1945, Eric Ambler

Román Lopez Forment - Dusenbergs - Moritz Moszkowsky & Wee Willie Winkie

2008-04-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

‘You’re a hero, Winkie,’ said Coppy—‘a pukka hero!’

‘I don’t know what vat means,’ said Wee Willie Winkie, ‘but you mustn’t call me Winkie any no more. I’m Percival Will’am Will’ams.’

And in this manner did Wee Willie Winkie enter into his manhood.

Wee Willy Winkie - And Officer and a Gentleman
Rudyard Kipling

In the late 50s and early 60s Román Lopez Forment was a weekly guest for dinner at our home ( I lived with my mother and grandmother in Mexico City). Román's mother, Josefina, was my grandmother's sister. She had been widowed in the Philippines so she moved to California with her daughter and five sons. It was there that her sons were adopted by a mafia don.

Román, who as a young boy had had unruly curly hair that made him resemble a Polish pianist and composer, Moritz Moszkowsky was given the nickname Moszkowsky and was a favourite of my grandmother. He quickly became one of my favourite uncles because of his stories of life in California in the 1930s. He and his brothers had money (the mafia don?) so they drove Dusenbergs, Auburns and owned yachts. They wore white slacks, played tennis and did not work much. There were many women. Román scandalized his family by marrying his manicurist who was a Mexican born German. Bertha and Román moved to Mexico. I was never smart or curious enough to find out what happened at the end of prohibition if that is were the Forments lost their regal family fortune. Bertha and Roman had two daughters and three sons and lived in the working class neighbourhood of Tacubaya. It was in Tacubaya where in the American British Cawdry Hospital both my daughters, Ale and Hilary were born. I remember vividly visiting them one day. A relative of Bertha's had appeared driving a Taunus. Bertha proudly told me that it was a German Ford.

When I was 14 Román's brother Vincent sent his son Bryan to stay with us. Bryan developed a terrible toothache. My mother sent him to the dentist. It was a terrible abcessed tooth which the dentist removed. We never heard the end of it as Bryan's father was a Christian Scientist. He told my mother that we should have obtained his permission if Bryan was to see a doctor. I remember this all very well because it was during those days that I had gone to see Grace Kelly's (the love of my life at that moment) last film, The Swan with Lois Jourdan and Alec Guiness (who played the prince who in the film accomplishes what Prince Rainier did in real life, take Kelly away from us!). I had gorged myself on a huge bag of pistachios and was so sick I did not eat a pistachio until last year. Bryan laughed when I mentioned that I loved Grace Kelly's neck. Bryan was more sexually precocious than I was and he suspected (rightly) that I did not know the meaning of the verb form, to neck.

Years later in 1967 I visited Vincent (my uncle Vincent who lived in Milbrae, California. Bryan was in college. Of the visit I remember nothing but I do remember visiting Vincent's brother Ralph who lived and lives in Stockton. He invited me for a barbecue in his backyard. As he was pouring soy sauce on the meat ( I had never experienced the custom of putting anything on cooking meet except salt, after all I am Argentine) I was astounded to see an ocenan liner parade past on the other side of my Uncle Roman's hedge. While I had recently attended a performance of Jefferson Airplane and I had marvelled, during the performance, at the sight of a pretty young girl in a corner staring at the greenness of her tiny glass of Crème de Menthe for what seemed hours, I could not believe my eyes. It was then that Uncle Ralph explained that Stockton was a sea port because of the ship channel and that the channel in question was in his back yard.

It is only now that I am 65 that I am curious enough to want to know who the mafia don was. Where did the money come from? Where did it go to? I had my chance a couple of years ago when cousin Bryan Forment and wife (out of the blue) visited me from San Francisco. He explained how his grandfather had had constant visitors who would kneel in the presence of his grandfather. I never asked. Bryan died last year.

His daughter Page and her husband Charlie Berghoffer (they live in Redmond, Washington) visited today. They don't know the story. I wonder if I will ever know.

Page and Charlie asked me if I was going to add (handwritten by my mother) to my mother's fold out family tree where I showed them how I was related to the Forments. Looking at their young and enthusiastic faces I probably brought them down by telling them that nobody in a few years would care and our decendants would then create their new family trees and we would be in a distant but forgotten past.

I was lucky enough to have an Uncle Román who visited and filled my head with wonderful stories. Could such wonderful stories entertain Rebecca? Can stories be stories if they have no special effects? I suspect it is yes. Lauren and Rebecca had a sleepover with us last night. I had to pick a movie we could all watch. I went to Videomatica with the idea of selecting the 1971 version of Kidnapped with Michael Caine. But I returned with John Ford's splendid Wee Willie Winkie with Shirley Temple, Victor McLaglen and C Aubrey Smith. But it was Cesar Romero's Khoda Khan, the rebellious revolutionary from Northern India that made Rebecca remark, "He is very good looking." This he was and we all (including Lauren) enjoyed a film in which Kipling's original protagonist Percival William Williams somehow becomes an extremely cute Priscilla Williams (Shirley Temple). Kidnapped may have to wait as more Shirley Temple will perhaps be in order.

Lurid Rhododendrons & Watermelon

2008-04-27T23:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I wrote about the epimedium and how I call it the Cinderalla of the garden. It's not there until you notice it. A plant, that is quite the opposite, owu with a flower that screams at you is the rhododendron. There are over 1000 species in this genus. There is an incredible variety ranging from whites and pale pinks and off whites to the most lurid oranges, reds, shocking pinks and purples. It is unfortunate that in Vancouver during the 50 and the 60s the most popular rhododendrons were plants that were bred for colour without any consideration of scent (there are some sweetly scented rhododendrons). These hybrids are pretty well indistructible, mostly disease free and faithfully bloom just about now. There are several in my garden and when we bought our house back in 1986 we could have gotten rid of them. I simply can never get rid of a plant unless it dies. And now when I have come to find them unsightly it is much too late. If I take them out it would take years for species rhododendrons to bulk up to size. Rosemary and I will have to ignore the "loud" screams from these plants.

Rebecca appreciates and loves rhododendrons. I have taught her to pass her fingers under the plants in the rhododendron walk in VanDusen. Many have an underside hairy substance under the leaves called indumentum. The colour can be white, pale white and many times a rich cinnamon brown. This indumentum can be very soft and it feels like the inside of a cat's ear. In our garden we do have Rhododendron luteum formerly Azalea luteum until botanists upgraded them to rhodos. Rebecca knows that when this rhododendrum blooms in about two weeks the yellow flowers will be extremely scented and when they beging to decay they paradoxically smell more strongly and more sweetly.

The mature hybrid rhododendrons in our garden are here to stay. Perhaps I respect the taste of Mrs Young who lived in our house for many years. Perhaps there were few species rhododendrons being sold and she only bought was was in the market.

Rebecca and I will simply have to visit that other garden of ours, VanDusen Botanical Garden and enjoy all those hairy leaves and sweet scents. They are our plants, too.

And when Rebecca and I want to smell Rhododendron decorum whose white flowers smell like ripe watermelon we can always visit our friend, gardener Pamela Frost who has a couple in her garden which she planted from seed. As the buds open they go through many colours before they finally become white.

Epimedium x rubrum - A Cinderellla Plant

2008-04-26T15:15:00.000-07:00

Our garden is a May to end of August garden. This is because that's when the roses bloom and hostas flower in June/July. There are some gardeners who want a 12-month garden. The work that entailes is really beyond the capability of two of us. Besides we want to rest from the garden and we are sure the garden wants to rest from us. As the garden decays in late fall I even enjoy the decay and the falling leaves. There is beauty in death.

We are about to enter May and that is when the fresh shoots of my hosta emerge in their pristine green or light yellow. They are wonderful, and as wonderful as the unfurling ferns.

But there are some plants which I call the Cinderella plants. Nobody notices them. This is because they bloom quietly about now when I am not looking for flowers. One of the Cinderella plants is the Epimedium. This Epimedium, Epimedium x rubrum caught my eye today. It blooms before the new leaves are out. In a few weeks when the leaves emerge the flowers will be invisible, covered by the hostas and the ferns. The flowers are no bigger than the nail of my smallest finger. They look like little stars or little space fighters in a science fiction film. Perhaps epimedium has been damned by being considered a ground cover. Can any other name condemn such a plant? Perhaps I will notice it a bit more from now on.

Kelly Tough - Not So

2008-04-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

In the mid 80s Vancouver had a reputation for beautiful women who had been discovered and then posed for Playboy Magazine. In 1983 Vancouver Magazine decided to do a story on four of them. I was assigned to photograph them and Les Wiseman wrote the story. They eidtor and art director felt that if the local photographer and Playboy talent scout Ken Honey photographed them the material would be too racy for a city magazine.

I had watched Ken Honey in action at Wreck Beach. To be fair he was nude too while he walked around with his camera. His favourite mode of operation was to approach large breasted women who owned dogs. He would pet the dog and start a conversation. While he did this he checked for droop. I talked to a few who had told me, "Ken chatted with me but then he suddenly went away. I knew it had to do with the droop of my breasts!"

Of all the Playboy Playmates I got to meet and photograph for the article (some refused to be photographed) the most interesting was Kelly Tough. She was friendly and really seemed like the girl next door until you noticed her chest. I took photographs of her at home and used her flowery wallpaper as a background. The art director, Rick Staehling sent me back for a re-shoot. It seems my pictures weren't glamourous enough. I don't recall what he said to me but it was something like, "You have some good material do work from. I am sure you can do better."

At the time I used umbrellas instead of soft boxes. I really had no clue how to shoot glamour and I made the mistake of positioning my umbrellas a bit too far so that the lighting was a bit flat. But my flat lighting made the playmates' complexion look extra smooth in that pre Photoshop era. We didn't really have to resort to air brushing.

Looking back at those 1983 photographs I see in them an innocence of an age and my own. I remember asking Les Wiseman (certainly more worldly than this Catholic educated photographer) about pornography here. I remember looking at Kelly Tough strangely but she quickly set me straight. She was kind and easygoing and most cooperative in spite of this stumbling photographer.

She looked at my Polaroids (left) and gave me constructive criticism. She made me relax. I became a fan and felt most jealous when a legion of photographers snapped her picture at the PNE!

Self-Portrait In Burnaby

2008-04-24T07:34:00.000-07:00

I first met Yuliya at Focal Point a few years ago. She was the model in one of my classes. She has been our favourite model since because unlike other models she shows up on time and never fails to appear. I have written here before about the relationship between a photographer and a model. I have a similar longish photographic relationship with Yuliya (she is from Ukraine, and is visibly annoyed if you happen to say, "the Ukraine"). She shows up at my studio every 6 months and we shoot for fun. But it isn't too much fun as she is demanding, critical and doesn't like any of the pictures I take of her. I wonder why she keeps coming back for more?

But she did like the combined self-portrait you see here. I have taken some before and of them Yuliya has said, "You were nervous and stressed out in my proximity and the picture is no good." How is one supposed to feel in the presence of a beautiful woman who is not wearing anything, particularly when I know that one of the most sacrosant of my shooting rules is that I never touch? She insisted on this last one and posed me for it. It was at her Burnaby basement suite and she had a curvy mirror on the wall.

She did not like any of the pictures that I took that day a few months ago but of this self-portrait she said, "It is perfect."