Wednesday, November 29, 2006


On a hot afternoon of June 1987 I spent several hours with Daniel Rutley, clinical psychotherapist on the cupola of the Vancouver Art Gallery. I was up there because John Lekich, one of the most well-adjusted persons I have ever met (except when giving advice on how not to wear a bow tie with a button down shirt), decided to write a story called Changing. It was about dealing with the inevitable crossroad most of us take sometime in our life about shifting our direction. Going through the red tape in order to get on that roof would have been enough to have made me seek Daniel Rutley privately.


Western Living Magazine art director Chris Dahl (a well adjusted psychedelic band drummer turned designer) had called me one day and told me, "I have this neat assignment but I want you to shoot it differently. You always print your own b+w negatives. This time around I want you to shoot in colour and I want you to print your own at home." If that wasn't enough he told me he wanted me to photograph my subjects (Daniel Rutley was one of them) with mirrors in unusual places.

This job was so tough that to this day all I remember of Daniel Rutley is that he was very quiet and I tried to avoid his gaze.

Daniel Rutley