As I See It - James Emler

Robert Title Exhibition of Erotic Photography - REFLEXIONS

2011-04-06T10:33:00.001-07:00

If this age of Post Modernist, Political, Concept Oriented Art with it's sterility, exclusivity and coldness leaves you feeling just a bit nostalgic for the Impressionists, rest assured that there are still a few left. I am sure that this statement will be regarded with distain by those in the inner circles but frankly, I don't care. It is a relief, a breath of fresh air to see work that is beautiful, that celebrates life and light, and that cherishes the mystery of the feminine.

True eroticism stimulates the imagination, is not exploitive, and shows the possibility of creative vision in everyday life. Robert Title's REFLEXIONS are exactly that. These pictures feature lovely but ordinary women, as seen through the eyes of a lover. A brief and passing glimpse of sensuality that seems to have existed for only a moment, yet captured and preserved by Title's lens.

Title's work with the nude started in the sixties when he studied sculpture. This led to photography where those sculptural concerns became more and more photographic in nature. Several exhibitions in the sixties and early seventies led to an NFB multi-media production titled REFLEXIONS that featured Title's extensive body of work. It now resides in the National Gallery of Photography in Ottawa where it is part of their collection. The original work was done on slides for projection and no prints were ever made from it.

Fortunately Title has revisited the theme over the past few years and produced a new body of work for the series. These prints are being offered in a limited edition through the gallery and are the subject of a limited edition book of the same name.

Robert Title's exhibition of erotic photography opens Friday, April 8th at Photohaus Gallery, 14 West 7th Avenue in Vancouver BC. The opening reception will be preceeded by a talk by the artist at 6:00pm. Don't miss it!

A small story about angels

2011-02-27T13:58:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine from Mexico asked me to write a very short story for a magazine she was working for at the time. It was supposed to be no larger than 700 words. I actually don't know if it was published or not but I thought I might post it here as it has meaning for me. I hope you enjoy it. By the way, this is completely fictional, any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

Becoming Thomas Patrick Hardy

Thomas Patrick Hardy, lawyer, loser, found himself facing yet another setback that Friday night. The split second that it took his shredded tire to dig into the soft shoulder was eclipsed by the realization that he was heading for the edge and certain death at the bottom of the gorge below.

Instinct prevailed over intellect as he jammed his foot on the brake causing his vintage Jaguar to spin on its new axis, throwing its rear over the edge to crash, trunk first, into the stump of a sycamore long since dead.

Tom felt himself surface. Eyes open, floating above the wreck, certain that this was it, his final moment. He looked down at himself, slumped in the seat, blood running from his head like a dark stream in the moonlight. No pain! Well, that was good.

He felt a moment’s sadness as he realized that no one would miss him. His family would probably fight over his estate he thought, knowing his wife would walk away with everything. She’d probably take her latest stud to Hawaii before tearing his heart out.

But, at least it was over for him. He looked toward the light, and floated up to the stars.

“C’mon buddy, we gotta get you outa here, there’s gas all over the place.”

The sonuvabitch that saved Thomas Patrick Hardy looked like he’d gone over the edge a few times already. His face was a terrain with stubble, creased and broken. But his eyes shone with pleasure as he dragged Tom away from his death. “That’s a nasty cut, but you’ll be ok” he said.

He turned as the car burst into flame and a wall of fire plummeted to the canyon floor. “Well, they’ll be here in a minute and I gotta go.”

“You saved my life,” said Thomas, “let me give you something.” He winced as he reached for his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills.

“Nah, give it to someone who needs it.” The stranger turned and walked away.

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Don’t have one.”

Thomas felt the hair sizzle on the back of his head as he scrambled away from the flames. The screaming sirens voiced his fear as he realized the whole gorge was on fire.

Thomas spent Sunday in hospital; no one came to see him, his wrist was broken and he had minor burns. A nurse named Nancy, overworked and stressed out, gently applied a salve to his blisters, trimmed his burnt hair and stitched the cut on his head. She told him about her son, four years old and full of life. He smiled and slipped a thousand dollars into her pocket as he hugged her goodbye.

On Monday, he got a haircut, took a cab to the office and told them he was quitting. They accepted his resignation letter and told him he would be missed. He knew they were lying.

He decided to walk home. He gave a street guy a twenty as he passed. The man looked at him, straight in the eye, and said “Thank you brother.” Thomas looked back at him and smiled.

He spent the rest of his day looking for ways to help the people he met. He didn’t give any more money away but he did buy groceries for an older woman who was in a checkout. He gave his seat on the bus to a pensioner and thanked the driver as he got off.

He had lunch in a diner, with apple pie for dessert. He flirted with the waitress and left her a very good tip. When he finally got home, he listened to music while he made himself dinner.

He spent the rest of the evening looking at wedding pictures, remembering the love that he felt for Sarah. He decided to give her the house and half the money. After all, she earned it, Lord knows, he was no angel.

That night however, Thomas Patrick Hardy dreamt he had wings…

Meesha

2010-12-12T11:13:00.000-08:00

If there is a God, I'll bet he or she has a pretty good sense of humor. Actually, for the record, I do think God exists. As a matter of fact, I think the evidence is incontrovertible. I am not convinced however, that God has any interest in our lives. But if I'm wrong about that and He or She does have more than a passing interest, it must be quite a show, watching all these self-centered idiots making a hash of things.

I think that mankind has a single all pervasive challenge, the answer to which will provide a solution to all our problems. We must learn to honor, value, cherish and protect life. I know that sounds trite but I am convinced it's as simple as that. If we truly honored life in all its forms, our problems would soon be resolved because our priorities would completely sort themselves out.

This has been brought home to me by a rather small, innocent creature whose life has become central to mine, our dog Meesha.

OK, I understand that you might want to stop reading now and click off to some other place that is more interesting. Frankly, a few months ago, this would be exactly what I would have done as well. But, things have changed for me and I see things a lot more clearly because of this little dog.

Meesha is a rescue dog. She was brought to our door by Sasha, a woman from one of the rescue organizations that Gaetanne found on the Internet. It was obvious she had been abused in some way, she was extremely skittish and needed a lot of room to settle down. Sasha explained to us that Meesha had a difficult time with men and it seemed that whatever had happened to her was at the hands of a man. That much became very clear over the next few days as we began to get to know each other.

At first she would not come anywhere near me and it was a full three days before I even got to touch her. It was quite a while later that she became comfortable with us, and especially with me. She is quiet, loving, intense, respectful, compassionate, caring and of course, fun loving. She lives each minute intensely in the way that dogs seem to do. She has a sense of humor, she smiles a lot and loves to run. Meesha is very stubborn. She stops at times for reasons beyond our understanding and won't move. She loves to ride in the car and feels very secure there it seems.

Over time, we have discovered clues to her past. This included the day that a friend of ours came to visit. As he walked in the door, Meesha erupted, barking and showing her teeth. He was holding a rolled up newspaper.

Another time, we were playing together and instead of throwing the ball, I kicked it. She stopped dead in her tracks and looked at me like I had committed a crime. She realized pretty quickly that I meant no harm but it was a very intense moment.

But now we are pretty close, we hang out together and trust each other. She sits in my lap when I invite her and sometimes I watch her sleep. She dreams and I wonder what they are about. She yips and twitches and seems so vulnerable. I don't understand how anyone could ever have been cruel to her. She gives me peace and I am a better person for having her in my life.

As for God, well, that's the question isn't it? How could there not be a God when there are such beautiful creatures in the world?

Gerry and Michael

2010-11-15T11:22:00.001-08:00

A stroll on the beach at Jericho with Michael, my sister Gerry, Gaetanne and Mischa. Heavy skies and sprinkles of rain. Warm hearts and good feelings, a few quiet moments before the drive to YVR and a long flight.

Michael Kusugak - Author

2010-11-14T16:07:00.000-08:00

Michael is dedicated to the preservation and proliferation of Inuit culture. His books are based upon the legends, stories, and personal histories, given to him in his youth by his parents and elders. He is the author of seven children's books, including; Northern Lights: The Soccer Trails, winner of the Ruth Schwartz Award; Hide and Seek; My Arctic 1, 2, 3; and Baseball Bats for Christmas; and was co-writer of A Promise Is a Promise (with Robert Munsch). He recently won The Vicky Metcalf Award for Children’s Literature. His most recent works are; Curse of the Shaman, A Marble Island Story and The Littlest Sled Dog.

Remembering the Olympics

2010-11-07T18:22:00.000-08:00

A year ago, I never would have imagined that I would be saying this but I miss the Olympic spirit that we had in Vancouver last winter. It was amazing to see the change that took place in this city over those two weeks.
I admit, I was very skeptical of the whole thing. It seemed like an incredible waste of money. The cost of hosting those games was far more than anyone will ever admit to. How can we ever tabulate the cost of shutting down the Cambie bridge for over a year? The traffic jams themselves were beyond estimation. Thousand of cars, idling in traffic for all those hours, how can anyone estimate the impact of the closures? How much CO2 was expended in those lineups? I shudder to think of it.
But, when it finally all came together, I have to admit that the transformation was undeniable. I have never experienced anything like it before. Riding the bus to work was a pleasure! I met so many people. It seemed that everyone was feeling the joy and excitement that swept into the city with the games.
One night, I was on my way home from work. It was during the Canada/Russia hockey game, and this woman who must have been in her seventies reached across the aisle and touched me to ask if I knew what the score was. We wound up talking for the rest of the trip and she told me that she was a volunteer who had been assigned to security! Now this lady was not a large woman at all, as a matter of fact, she seemed a bit frail to me and I asked her what she was doing in security.
She proceeded to tell me that her job was to ask people to pour out their liquor on the street. She said she was very nervous about it initially but to date she had told almost 30 different persons that they had to dump their booze and she had never had a problem. As a matter of fact she said that most laughed as they did it!
Every day I met someone new who had a story. Every time I stepped out of the house, or walked into a bar or a restaurant, or stepped up onto a bus, I felt that unique feeling that I wish I felt every day. It was a great time and I miss it!

Robert Title

2010-11-05T19:48:00.000-07:00

The Photographer.

Robert was shooting from inside the room which momentarily transformed to become the inside of a larger camera. The curtains became a shutter, the camera, a lens, and he became his own emulsion.

Tofino

2010-11-05T13:19:00.001-07:00

Tofino, Canada's west coast and a chance to get away for a while, a time to focus on making pictures and listening to the ocean. This is Robert Title on the beach, our third photo expedition together.

Henry Nolla - Sculptor

2010-07-22T18:50:00.000-07:00

Gaetanne and I met Henry on a trip to Tofino. She was walking on the beach and saw this rather strange looking hippyish guy walking on the beach. His hair and beard were blowing in the wind and he was quite a sight. She approached him and asked if she could take his picture. He asked if she really was a photographer and then invited her to come over to his studio. When she asked where it was, he pointed to the Wickaninish Inn! Upon further query she discovered that his studio was actually next to the Inn, just off the beach. Apparently he is their resident artist and much of the wood carvings, poles etc around the Inn are actually his. While we were there, I asked if I could do his portrait on my Hasselblad, he seemed nervous but agreed to let me photograph while he worked. This was the only frame where he actually looked up at me.

Maurice Leduc - WW2 Canadian Army Veteran

2010-01-14T14:39:00.000-08:00

Bon Papa, as he likes to be called, is a hero. He fought in Europe during the Second World War after landing on the Normandy beachhead in June of 1944. His outfit drove trucks carrying food and supplies to the front lines in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. He carried survivors from the concentration camps back to what remained of civilization.

Maurice met the love of his life, Adrienne, in Belgium in 1944. It was love at first sight for Maurice who often tells the story of the first time he Adrienne when she was decorating a Christmas tree. Apparently he whistled at her and without turning around she said "Oh, that must be one of those Canadians!" They were married on December 27, 1945, as soon as the army would allow it. After the war, many tragedies and much adversity, Maurice and Adrienne returned to Canada where they built a life for themselves. They recently celebrated their sixty-fourth wedding anniversary. Adrienne and Maurice have five children, seven grand children, and three great grand children. Bon Papa walks several kilometers every day, he always has a project of some kind and always does his best at whatever he chooses to work at. He's returned to Normandy every year since I have known him, to honor the men who landed on the beaches in 1944.

Adrienne Leduc - Author

2010-01-08T08:17:00.001-08:00

Adrienne Bruynings was born in Baarle-Nassau on the Holland Belgium border in 1924. When war broke out in Europe, the Bruynings family was living in Herentals in Belgium. In December of 1944, she met the young Canadian soldier Maurice Leduc whom she married on 27 December 1945. She moved to Canada with Maurice in 1956 and now lives in North Vancouver where they recently celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary.

Adrienne wrote Antione - Coureur de Bois (Septentrion, 2008) over a fifteen year period characterized by intensive research into the genealogy of the Leduc family and early Canadian history. Originally published in English in 1992, the book has now been translated into French. Mme. Leduc has also written articles for Reader’s Digest, The Beaver and in Le Viquet and Nouvelles Racines in France.

Adrienne is also Gaetanne's mom. She is one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I have ever met.

Toni Onley - Artist 2003

2010-01-07T22:50:00.000-08:00

I met Mr. Onley at the Delta Airpark on a warm July afternoon. The Delta Airpark is a unique airfield. It is a grass strip with roots in the early days of aviation. You can walk out onto the field and talk with the pilots as they work on their aircraft.

When I arrived Toni had just rolled his beloved Buccaneer out of the hangar and was planning to fly to Painter's Lodge for the weekend. I think he liked that I was using a 4x5 Speed Graphic. We had very lttle time as it turned out, he struck this pose and seemed content to chat for a moment as I set up.

The following year Toni died from a heart attack while he was doing touch and go landings on the Fraser River. He was an exceptional individual who lived his life to the fullest. I was honored to meet him. His paintings for me, have a spiritual quality that speaks of the unique perspective one gets from flying above the great Canadian landscape.

Vince Fairleigh at The Hollywood

2010-01-06T11:07:00.000-08:00

The Hollywood Theater is without doubt one of my favorite places in Vancouver and I must say that Vince Fairleigh is one of my favorite people. Vince's family has owned the Hollywood for over 70 years and to celebrate their 74th anniversary we did Vince's portrait outside the theater. Normally, I would have shot this on 4x5 but I was very commited to this idea and just don't have a lens that is wide enough. So we shot it digital on the 5Dmk2, a wonderful camera in it's own right.

Vince is also a very talented Nisga'a artist whose work can be seen at the Anthropology Museum at UBC. Last summer he was thrilled to meet the Emperor and Empress of Japan during their visit here and his always smiling face was more radiant than ever. And I have just learned that he is going to be the artist in residence during the Olympics.

I always think of merchants as the face of the city, Vince is one of the best...

The Project - Part 2

2009-12-07T09:59:00.000-08:00

This is an excerpt from my book Search for Silence.

When I was 18 my father passed away from a heart attack. It was very sudden, one day he was there, the next he was not. Several weeks later we got a call from Goodall Photo on Hargrave Street asking when he was going to come to pick up his camera.

Apparently he got this camera from somewhere and decided to have it repaired. It was always a difficult thing to explain that my father was no longer alive but I stumbled through and arranged to pick it up the next day.

Bob Goodall was a gem of a man. He carefully explained how the camera worked and would not let me pay for the repairs. He also gave me two rolls of film.

I kinda felt that my Dad had given me a gift. It was the middle of winter and I went to the Legislative Building grounds to take some pictures. I rushed back to Goodalls and was thrilled the next day to get my pictures. One of them (sadly long gone now) really struck me and I began to think that maybe this was something that I could do well.

The next day, I went to visit my girlfriend and took pictures of her as well.

They were awful, she hated them, and we broke up. I put the camera away and never touched another one for several years.

I was changed though, in Winnipeg nature mostly seemed to be something to be conquered or at least survived. It's very cold in the winter and hot in the summer. with trillions of mosquitoes lying in wait for you to enter their kill zone. But of course there is also great beauty and I began to see it.
_________________________________________

Getting older is an interesting process and as GG's dad says, "it's not for the faint of heart." One thing I have notcied is that our past lives with us. For him and for many veterans of the Second World War, memories of the past have become increasingly more significant and tangible. One thing is certain, they have certainly become more vivid for him.

For me, I seem to be defined, to a certain extent, by my memories. The scary part is that I am less sure of them now than before.

I was talking to my sister a while ago, about the day that my dad died. This is an event that is vivid in my mind. It's almost as if it happened last week. Yet she and I remember it differently, we were together from the first moment til the ambulance left and yet there is so much that is different in the sequence and the acutal content of the events that I am left to wonder what really happened. I then spoke to my brother about it and his memory is different as well.

So over the last few years I have been asking myself how much of my memory has been altered and why that has happened. I know that everyone has their own experience of an event and that our memories are tempered by our attempts at rationalizing our experiences. I also find myself wondering what role photography plays in the contruction of our memories as I do believe that when it comes to family photography the truth of the image is not always apparent in the picture.

So here's a shot of me riding on my dad's shoulders, I have no memory of it beyond the image and yet there is something about it that speaks to me of my relationship with him.

On the other hand there are some images that speak beyond the borders of the frame. The following picture speaks volumes about my parents for me. I see so many things in the angle of my mom's head and the slope of my dad's shoulders. They should have been happy. The war was over, they were together again, starting a new life. It doesn't look that way though, does it?

It raises so many questions for me and I wonder when, exactly, this was taken, and by whom? Was it the enemy, my mother's nemesis? I rather think so...

So what I have done here it take a picture that I know little about and extrapolated my ideas on it. But I have to remember, they have little to do with reality, it's only a picture, a fragment of a complex history and really, there is no context, only questions if we care to ask them.

Ralph Gibson once told me, "context is everything".

Being In the Moment

2009-12-04T23:28:00.000-08:00

I think that one of the great things about photography is that it is so accessible. It seems, particularly these days, that just about anyone can, in the act of making a photograph, do something that has never been done before.

There was a time when my sole intention in photography was to do just that. I must admit that I found this very daunting. How does one take original, meaningful pictures when so many others have created so many great works?

Often I was told that to be a true photographer I had to do original work. But it seemed that everything I was attempting had been done before. Whether it was a landscape, a still life, a street scene, a social or political moment, it seemed that somewhere, sometime, someone had done it before.

It was no small revelation when I realized that no two moments in time are exactly the same, no two situations, no two personalities and indeed, no two viewpoints exactly coincide. Often I would go out shooting pictures with friends only to find that no matter where we went and what we shot, our pictures were always different.

This realization gave me the license to be myself and to hold to the notion that the act of making a photograph is so loaded with potential that there is always a chance to make a really powerful and perhaps even great, picture. As a matter of fact, I came to realize that the only time that I could guarantee that I couldn't possibly make a great picture is when I wasn't actually shooting.

We all know that in photography, subject is dominant, that the subject photographed is such a powerful element that it is often difficult to see beyond it. But we also know that the subject itself, regardless of its uniqueness, is not what makes a picture great. It is how the subject is rendered that is really important.

In photography, the difference between greatness and mundanity can be measured in millimeters and milliseconds. A slight shift to the left or to the right, up or down, a tiny lag in releasing the shutter, can result in absolute failure. But when we get it right, when everything works, when the lines of force coincide, when our timing, our viewpoint, our sense of rightness all come together, then photography rises on its axis, becoming the great and wonderful medium that stops the movement of time to reveal universal truth. Therein lies the key.

Photography I suggest, is not about achieving greatness. The whole notion of being a great photographer is absurd, for photography is a way of speaking visually. It is a way of saying things that often cannot be spoken. Photography is a way of looking, of assigning significance and attributing meaning.

I also suggest that often we don't really know what we think about a thing until we photograph it. The very act of seeing within the frame forces us to confront, and hopefully think about what is happening and what we are trying to say in the picture. Sometimes it is not that clear in our minds, we only know that there is something there. Sometimes the meaning of the picture is only seen when we make the print.

Our search for meaning is a personal quest, each of us making choices as we live our lives, always seeking, always evaluating. Some people give it up, not photographers I think.

For photographers, a picture can be part of the puzzle, a chance to make some sense of our lives. Our pictures are our milestones. Some acting as questions, fewer as answers, about what it means to be human at a particular time and in a particular place.

What's important is that we have the chance, to try to understand the world on our own terms, visually, and to share our findings with other souls. Who knows, we might find meaning in the search, satisfaction in the sharing.

The Project

2009-11-28T12:03:00.000-08:00

I'm almost afraid to think of how long it has been since I made the decision to do this project. It started as a book and reaches back all the way into the mid seventies.

I have always felt a sense of urgency about my life. My father passed away in his early 50's and I had always been told how much like him I was. So I expected to have a short life. I resolved, not so much to pack as many experiences into it as possible, as to experience each day as fully as possible.

As my life progressed I found this more and more difficult to do. It seemed that much of my life was spent trying to cope with the world around me and my role in it. In the early sixties I felt anything was possible and focused on being the best person I could be, the best son, the best brother, the best catholic, but when it came to school, man, that was a tough one. But I digress and will return to that later.

It was in the 70's that I came to realize that my goals might not be met and I became an angry young man. I realized that this was destroying my experiences and my relationships. So I found myself reading and article in Psychology Today titled "Growing Up With The Dream" by Daniel Levinson, which led me to understand that my life consists of dreams, the dreams we construct about how we want to live, what we want to experience, set our direction, and the dreams we have at night, are how we sort and rationalize our experiences. I know this is a simplistic perspective but when it comes down to it, I'm a pretty simple guy.

So I began by looking at the origins of my dreams. Not the ones I had at night but the ones I made for myself, my goals and my ideas of myself and my life. Of course, my parents played a big role in this and I quickly realized that it was my father whose influence was the greatest.

For the most part, he was a remote character. Of my brothers and sisters I was probably closest to him but I never really knew him. I mythologized him in my memories.

The most important thing I knew about him was that he was a pilot before and during the war and I wanted to be one too. I was obsessed about flying. He seldom spoke about it but we had picture albums with snapshots of airplanes and the odd one of him. They fueled my imagination.

Francis Robert (Jim) Emler

This is a fleet Trainer I was told, a sweet airplane to fly. He liked open cockpit airplanes as they were the first he flew.

He was in England during the war and although he was an American, he apparently came to Canada to join the Canadian Air Force in 1939.

I thought this was fantastic and often tried to get him to talk about it but he never would.

The Old Dog

2009-11-24T12:01:00.000-08:00

As you can see from my picture in the last post, I'm not as young as I used to be and, consistent with my age I suppose, I'm not always ready to embrace new technologies.

So forgive me for posting on something that others have been doing for some time now but as I have told my students in the past, it doesn't matter if it has been done before, it's what you do with it that counts.

So here are a few forays into the world of HDR.

I feel a bit nostalgic about this picture as it was done during a sunny time in Vancouver. A time which seems sadly long gone and due to return not for many months.
If you don't know about HDR perhaps I can take a few minutes to give you the basics. HDR is an acronym which means "High Dynamic Range", it means that by stacking multiple pictures over top of each other, each taken at a different exposure, one can extend the range of the capture beyond what we normally see. This means that we can see color in the shadows even though they might normally be seen as black. So by doing say, 5 different exposures from two stops under exposed to 2 stops over exposed, stacking them together in Photoshop, and using a very sophisticated program like PHOTOMATIX by HDRSoft, we can create a picture that "sees" into the shadows while maintaining highlight quality.
The look is very illustrative but also photographic.

I got a chance to use this technique in September when we went north to visit our friends, Steve and Juliette in their wonderful hand-built home. Here's an interior looking into their living room from the staircase.

You can see the love that has been put into this house over the years. It has been built from trees that were growing on the property and recycled materials that they managed to scrounge. As you can see, these people have big hearts and great imaginations.

Here's the yard to the west with the greenhouse.

How could we not feel inspired by beauty such as this?

Starting Out

2009-11-23T17:10:00.000-08:00

Portrait of me by Miranda Robson

Hello and welcome to my blog. I've been involved in the visual arts for over 35 years primarily as a photographer. For the last ten years, almost to the day, I have been involved in teaching photography here in Vancouver, British Columbia. It is without doubt, one of the best things I have ever done.

So I'm starting this blog for a couple of reasons, to give a forum for my thoughts and to stay in touch with the some of the wonderful people that I have met over the last ten years. If you are not a former student please know that you are welcome too.

Those of you who know me also know that I live, sleep, eat and breathe photography, or perhaps I should say imaging as I am now considering other mediums as well. (More about that later.) You also know that I am as excited about photography now as I was when I first started. How lucky we are to be involved in the arts! Every day there is something new to discover, I never know what is going to happen and what I am going to see.

By the way, Gaetanne and I went to the Winsor Gallery on Granville Street yesterday to see the drawings of BRIAN BOULTON and multi-disciplinary work of CHRISTIAN NICOLAY. If you get the chance, go see it, both of these artists do wonderful work. It is one of the most inspiring exhibitions I have seen in some time.

Here's a portrait of my dear Gaetanne. I did this shot a few years ago at Chesterman Beach at Tofino. It was her birthday and I had just given her those binoculars (after many, many hints!)