Alain Blanchard Waits And Lisa Poses
Thursday, July 02, 2009
I first photographed the Vietnamese/Canadian Lisa Ha in June 2001, below, right. I then photographed her in Feb 2004. Today she posed for me in my studio. I asked her how old she was. She told me she was 33. One of the few fringe benefits of my profession is to photograph people over and over and be able to watch gentle (in the case of Lisa Ha) march of time. Perhaps I will photograph her a few more times before I hang up my cable release.
Unfortunately few women will allow themselves to be photographed beyond a certain age. I know I cannot approach a woman and tell her, “I am fascinated by the beautiful over the top decay of my garden in the fall. How would you like to pose for me?” I would receive, at the very least, a slap. And yet there is beauty in decay.
As I left for Texas on June 10 my mottled roses Rosa ‘Alain Blanchard’ and Rosa ‘Soleil Brilliant’ were about to bloom. I felt sad that I would not see them in their prime. The fact is that when I returned June 18 they were going strong. Today I have cut off what is left of Alain Blanchard and I show here (the first one is from today) with two other images I took of her June 20, 2007. At her best Alain Blanchard has these spots on her petals. People who don’t know think that somehow this Gallica rose has suffered rain damage. But in fact a few of us appreciate the odd beauty of the marbled look. And a few of us also appreciate the beauty of over the top decay.
Oh Canada!
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
When I met Rosemary in Mexico City in 1968 I knew nothing of Canadians. In fact I used to think Canadians as “non-Americans”. The few I had met before Rosemary, were always correcting people and saying, “I am not an American, I am Canadian.” It seemed to me that Canadians were quite sure of what they weren’t. From Rosemary I learned to pronounce Quebec as Kebek and she had the quaint custom of saying “When I was in grade 9...” To my ears it sounded odd. Rosemary made me aware of Pierre Trudeau and that he was sexy even though the only other sexy Canadian I have ever met was Rosemary. I liked Rosemary in particular because of her precise English that did not sound American. It was almost a British English.
My other knowledge of Canada was listening to my Grandmother Lolita tell me how in the late 20s they had taken a Japanese ship from Manila to a place that had mountains and tall trees. She pronounced the place “bancoober”. She told me of a huge train station (the CP Station) where she, my mother, her son Antonio and the other very young daughter Dolly had taken a train to Montreal and from there another to New York City.
When I had met Rosemary I had a confused sense of national identity. I had gone to do my military service in Argentina and a moment of tearful patriotism when I had sworn allegiance (with thousands of other sailors) soon became one of disappointment and cynicism. I had been ordered to participate in a coup where the armed forces removed our legally elected president.
In Mexico, in 1968 there had been a massacre of students at Tlatelolco. I talked like a Mexican but I did not feel like one. If anything my four years in a Texas Catholic boarding school had left its mark and I felt quite American. Like most Argentines I wore Levis and only wore button down shirts. I only listened to 60s American jazz and read only in English. Most of the books were by American authors.
When we arrived in Canada in 1975 with our two daughters my first confusion was running into Mexicans who did not seem to understand my Spanish. Rosemary told me that these “Mexicans” were really Native Canadians. It was then that I realized that the old dictum that had been drummed into me at school about the red Indian and the yellow race of the Orient was all a sham.
About 15 years ago I learned to dance the Argentine tango and I made friends with an Argentine couple Juan Manuel Sanchez and Nora Patrich. We would “matear” or drink mate almost every day. I began to read in Spanish. Suddenly I had a deep nostalgia for Argentina. I returned a couple of times but somehow I didn’t feel I fit there. I felt like a hybrid. I was a bit of everything. I was an everything that did not add up to anything. I was a landlubber Edward Everett Hale, The Man Without A Country.
I had to become a Vancouverite before I could be a Canadian. That happened some years ago when I participated in a photographic show of architecture of our city. It was sponsored by the UBC School of Architecture which had opened a city branch by the Dominion Building. I looked at my pictures on the wall. They were up there with pioneers of such as Otto Landauer and Leonard Frank. These two men had photographed Vancouver from its inception. I was up there, too! This had to be my city. I left the show with the excitement that after almost 28 years in Vancouver (the show may have been about 11 years ago) I was no longer a tourist.
I was from here.
Canada rapidly adopted me without much fuss and too much paper work. Canada made me feel at home and fed me the addictive drug that is efficiency, 110 volts that are mostly unwavering and comforted me with the realization that I could lose my driver’s license but be able to get a replacement in minutes with no fuss. I took it for granted that the gas I put in my car was not diluted with water and except for the few times I was caught speeding I never felt and fear about being stopped by a cop. And every year, year after year I received and have received all 12 issues of the National Geographic. Except for the odd postal strike, the mail works!
I feel nostalgia for Argentina and I feel nostalgia for the colours, the heat and the ancient churches of Mexico. But what I feel for Canada seems to be more serene. It is a calming realization that I live where I belong and I belong here where I live.
Photo above by Robert Blake.
The Bastard Does Not Soar - He Sinks
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Students are much in my thoughts these days. Schools have changed or at least the ones where I teach have. Gone are the days when you respected a teacher because of age or erudition.
It was sometime around 1972 when I had a pair of students who are possibly the best I ever had. They were both in the 9th grade (let's be Canadian and make that grade 9)in a high school in Mexico City. One was a young girl called Wendy Shanken the other a young man born in Switzerland called Andy Broennimann. Andy came to Vancouver in the late 70s to study at UBC. When he first arrived I told him if he planned to cycle in the winter that he needed to buy chains for his bicycle tires. In his wonderful naïve youth he did go to a bicycle shop to enquire about them! Later on he graduated to a motorcycle and he would take my daughter Ale who was around 10 for thrilling rides up the hill of Springer Avenue in Burnaby where we lived. He left Vancouver and a few years later he sent me a postcard from Cairo. He vanished after that. Wendy showed up in Vancouver perhaps some 10 years ago. She was organizing conferences. She lived with her husband in a small town near Montreal. A couple of years ago she sent me an e-mail and told me how she was traveling for her job all over the world. She named a string of countries in Africa I had never heard of. I became annoyed when she said, “I love to travel and to study different cultures.” It struck me sort of like Barbra Streisand loving people who love people. In another communication from her I decided to reply making believe I was my wife Rosemary. “Rosemary” informed Wendy of the sad occasion of her husband's recent death. It had been sudden. Wendy answered with a poignant letter of condolence and how I had somehow been a part of her life as a teacher. I responded with a statement that my death was a bit premature. Wendy answered, “You bastard.” I have never heard from her again.
Today I reached for my copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. Back in 1972 I had read the story to my 9th graders using a library edition. I had the class mesmerized with the idea that one could will hard enough and be able to soar. When the term ended Andy and Wendy gave me my own copy and reproduced here is their dedication.
It seems now that the last paragraph of the little book might appropriately convey how I feel about students and that perhaps I should give the unruly bunch I face these days more of a chance.
And though he tried to look properly severe for his students, Fletcher Seagull suddenly saw them all as they really were, just for a moment, and he more than liked, he loved what it was he saw. No limits, Jonathan? he thought, and he smiled. His race to learn had begun.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Richard Bach
Death For Lunch
Monday, June 29, 2009
Rebecca arrived on Saturday with her new Bikini and told me, “Let’s go swimming today. I want to use my new bathing suit.” I told her that it wasn’t possible as a friend was coming in the afternoon for a chat in the garden and I had already made the commitment. Rebecca insisted, “Can’t you do it just for me?” I explained that my friend was sort of doing me a favour so I could not just think of her.
I decided to tell her some truths.
Rebecca, the man who is coming is Charles Campbell. He used to be an editor at the Georgia Straight and he gave me tons of work when he was there. He left for the Vancouver Sun and started a new Thursday magazine called Queue. With Queue he created a page called Rear Window in which he had me in mind. On that page I would use a picture that I had taken in the past that might have some relevance to the present. I wrote many Rear Windows.
One day Charles came to the house with a special request. He wanted me to take his portrait. He had learned that he had a malignant tumour in his head and that the only way they could reach it was through a dangerous operation involving either accessing it through his palate or through one of his eyes. Not only was his life in danger but should he survive it he would either lose feeling in most of his mouth and or lose one of his eyes. There was finality in the portrait I took of Charles. This one is the only one where he smiled as nicely as he could and somehow even managed to avoid his trademark crooked smile. Jokingly (perhaps to control a fear anybody in his shoes would have had) he told me, “I want you to photograph me so I can remember myself when I was handsome. Who knows what I will look like after the operation."
Rebecca instantly forgot about her swimming and wanted to immediately look at the portraits. “What does he look like now?” She also reminded me that she had met Charles and knew his wife and daughter. I had forgotten that Rebeccca had met the Campbells at a party of a mutual friend of ours.
Charles arrived just in time for a simple lunch of baked beans with melted cheese on top. We had that and my iced tea. At the table Rebecca grilled Charles. At one point Charles mentioned how an aunt of his had had a similar operation and that she had not been as lucky as he had been. She had lost an eye and wore an eye patch. At the dinner table Charles explained with glee a trick his aunt plays on friends. She removes her eye patch and inserts a finger in her mouth and then makes it stick out from her empty eye socket. At that point I think that Charles made a new friend in Rebecca.
Someday I will have to explain to Rebecca that at least half of my extensive files of celebrity portraits is due in part to the golden age of the print media in Vancouver. In that golden age actors, directors, bands and singers from abroad came to Vancouver and granted interviews to promote what they did. Charles and his Georgia Straight would dispatch me to photograph them.
This is not something that I can ever forget nor can I ever thank enough the man who escaped death. I think that my friend John Lekich may have put it best when he may have sweetly told me, “I am sure Charles will make it. After all if he dies, who is going to give us work?”
Rebecca is urging me to photograph Charles again. She wants to make sure I get that indentation near his cheek close to the place where the surgeon peeled Charles’ face back. Luckily as I think back to Saturday’s table conversation I am thankful they were only beans.
A Time Traveler
Sunday, June 28, 2009
In July 2007 Rebecca Stewart, my granddaughter stood by the big red door of the Gothic revival structure that was the main building of my St. Ed’s High School. A few weeks ago during an electrical storm I moved one of the benches there and placed it right next to where Rebecca had stood. I watched the storm and heard the thunder while gazing north at the Austin skyline, the view that you can see here in back of Rebecca. A lighting bolt hit beyond the soccer field and it sparked down a tree. My company was a little white frog.
As I watched the little frog wait for stray bugs I thought of the complex mechanism of time. I could imagine the taxi that may have brought me from the Greyhound bus station on my return on a Sunday night from my Christmas vacation at home in Nueva Rosita, Coahuila. Even by grade 12 I still missed my home and my mother on that night. The lugubrious and dark Gothic structure had not helped dispell my depression. But the sound of the loud morning bell in the morning; it shook us into instant alertness, never gave me time to think back and my melancholy would fade as we prepared for our breakfast and our first class of the day.
As I rested my head against the big red door I thought of Rebecca and how I had had no inkling of her existence in the future as I had come up the stairs with my suitcase on route to my dorm. Yet I had photographed her by that door 46 years later and I could feel her presence as strongly as I had that taxi. Rosemary had also been with me that July in 2007 and that felt as unlikely. And here I was sitting on the bench leaning my head on the big red door missing them both.
It would seem that time appears to be linear and irreversible when we are young and our future is before us. From my vantage point on that bench with my frog companion, in the time and space of that evening, time was flowing back and forth and perhaps even sideways. I was a time traveler.
Rainbow's End
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Lauren was 7 today. We had a special dinner with Lauren’s favourite food of thin meat tacos and fresh buttered corn. But dessert was almost a problem. Lauren wanted a white vanilla cake. Her sister Rebecca was the one who baked the cake and she was keen in putting some Bonne Maman raspberry jam to make it pink. There was an altercation involving crying and shouting but in the end Lauren accepted a pink cake. Rosemary had asked Rebecca to bring her digital camera to take pictures of the blowing of the candles. I insisted in using my large camera and light. This went against the grain of Rebecca who wanted the traditional walking into the room with the lit cake while all of us would have been singing happy birthday. My lights and camera make it difficult to be spontaneous. I like to shoot it all planned, posed and calculated. I understand more than ever this conundrum as I and my photographic style fade into obsolescence. We did it both ways and Rebecca got her picture to show her father Bruce who could not be present. He was working. And of course I must wait until Monday noon before I can have my transparency film processed. That is why this blog has no record of the candle blowing.
It was on Friday of last week when Rebecca was still in school that I went to her potted rose garden and cut some of her roses and scanned them. I projected them to Rebecca’s surprise at our joint lecture, A Rose Through a Child’s Eyes, at the World Rose Convention last week. I think that Rebecca’s roses are beautiful. The yellow one on the right is Mrs. Oakley Fisher. The two large pink ones are Rosa 'Königin von Dänemark', the deep red ones are a Gallica Rose, Tuscany Superb and the spray of roses is Ballerina. I do believe she has good taste.
As we left to take them home I noticed the rainbow outside. When we were getting close to their home I said, “It seems that the rainbow is starting at your house.” Rebecca then asked, “Papi, would you like a rose with the colours of the rainbow? I would not like it.” “As a matter of fact,” I answered, “there is a miniature rose called Rainbow’s End which is multi coloured.” Both Rebecca and I concurred that such a rose would never grace our gardens.
Lauren then asked, “Papi is that rainbow far?” “It is very far,” I answered. Lauren then said, “But not as far as Mexico?” Lauren, Rebecca and Rosemary are going to Los Cabos in Baja California in August so Mexico is in Lauren’s mind these days.
The Rose Expert
Friday, June 26, 2009
Last week Rebecca and I spoke in three one-hour sessions (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) at the World Rose Festival that was held at the new Vancouver Convention Centre. Both of us had these tags hanging from our necks that defined us as experts. The theme of the lecture was A rose through a child's eyes. Rebecca exceeded my expectations on how she was going to perform. As a matter of fact I asked her, "Aren't you going to be nervous facing all those people?" She answered something like, "That's not going to happen." On the second day we were preceded by the legendary English rose expert Peter Beales. "Aren't you nervous that we are going to speak after him? " Her reply was a a flat, "No."
We had a trick up our sleeve. We used a basic Power Point program that enabled me to place one, two or more pictures at one time on the screen. Here is an example:
When these images appeared on the screen Rebecca said,"This rose is an English Rose called Mary Rose. Mary Rose was Henry VIII's flagship. She sank on her maiden voyage. Not too long ago they found the wreck. Inside were boxes and boxes of long bows. They put strings on them and they found that one needed a pull of 100 lbs. These English bows defeated the French knights three times during the Hundred Years War. These bows were made of Taxus or English Yew. The plant in the bottom of this picture which is in my grandfather's garden is a taxus."
She, of course, blew them away with erudition! The president of the Toronto Rose Society invited Rebecca to lecture (with an honararium, of course!) if she ever goes to Toronto. And of course, I was most proud. And prouder still when the venerable Peter Beales came up to me and said, "I was impressed by Rebecca."
