Iggy Pop and Joseph Goebbels
Wednesday, March 14, 2007 
In 1989 I had the good fortune to photograph a drug free and sober Iggy Pop at the Fours Seasons Hotel. I decided to use a dramatice spotlight low on him for my picture and when I looked at him through my viewfinder I recalled a photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1939 in Geneva when he was covering the League of Nations Assembly. His subject was Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister. In retrospect that photograph of the man with an annoyed and malign expression proved all too prophetic of horrors to come. I mentioned this to Iggy (it sounds odd to write Mr. Pop or even Pop) who immediately became very excited and told me he had been to the very house in Geneva.
He then posed for me and gave me the closest malign expression he could muster. For a gentleman like Iggy Pop this was hard to do but I appreciated his gesture. Alex Waterhouse-Hayward
Photographer, Writer, Artist
Alex Waterhouse-Hayward is a Vancouver-based commercial and fine art photographer. One of Canada's most experienced magazine and portrait photographers, Alex has photographed celebrities (Bob Hope, Candice Bergen, Dennis Hopper), politicians (Larry Campbell, Carole James, Jack Layton) actors (Molly Parker, Nicholas Campbell) writers (William Gibson, Nick Bantock, Douglas Coupland, Mario Vargas Llosa) and enough CEOs and business leaders to start his own capitalist army. His favourite photographic subjects are his granddaughter and the roses and hostas that populate his garden. His pictures have appeared in publications ranging from the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Stern to Readers' Digest, the Globe and Mail and the Georgia Straight. His commercial work has adorned everything from annual reports to postage stamps. Alex is also a teacher and a writer, and he would like to take your picture.
You can talk to Alex about all of this and more by calling him at 604-266-7200.
Cheri P - Ecdysiast Extraordinaire
Saturday, March 24, 2007 
On Christmas Eve 1966 my Argentine Merchant Marine ship the Río Aguapey docked in New Orleans. I decided to visit the city on my own and immediately went to the then notorious Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. I had never ever had a bourbon or seen a burlesque act so I followed some sailors into a club. I asked for my bourbon (it was terribly strong) and sat up front (in later years in Vancouver this was called "gynecology row"). A perfectly bored woman appeared on stage and she proceded to plug in an electrical cord to the wall oulet. This, I immediately found out was her music player. She then danced around looking extremely bored and by the time most of her clothes were off I was out of the joint. I left with the impression that the woman was some sort of robot who plugged herself in and then danced.It was around 1978 that I finally overcame my curiousity to enter the Drake Hotel Pub Lounge. I had been told that terrible things happened here and that no decent young man (by then I was 34) would ever be caught in there. I sat down and ordered my beer. I felt obliged to order beer even though I have never liked it. On stage I saw a very young (20, at the most) blonde girl with a bob haircut and legs that seemed to go on forever. She danced with skill, energy and with a beautiful smile on her face. I was so enamoured that I returned again and I soon was a Vancouver fan of the ecdysiast art. I became a fan of Cheri (that was her name) and of Tarren Rae (the only girl who could compete with Cheri in having long and shapely legs).
Cheri (on the Drake stage, right) had been known to kick so high that she once managed to break her nose with one of her legs.
It didn't take me long to insinuate myself into the presence of these dance queens so that I could try out my new flash equipment and learn to make beautiful women more beautiful and prove Mac Parry, the editor of Vancouver Magazine, wrong as he had asserted that I made beautiful women ugly and ugly women uglier. Karen Campbell At Last
Friday, March 23, 2007 
While working at Tilden Rent-A-Car some 30 years ago I decided to learn to swim with style so I took a stroke improvement class at the YMCA. A French-Canadian fellow swimmer found out I was a photographer and she asked me to take her portrait. I did not know that she worked at the gift department of Holt Renfrew nor did I know that she slipped my colour 8x10 prints into many of the frames of her deparment. Then one day Marlene Cohen (of Army & Navy fame) entered the gift department and I ended up taking portraits of the whole Vancouver Cohen family. It was Mrs Joe Cohen who told me to look up Gabriel Levy who was the fashion writer for Vancouver Magazine. Levy looked at my portraits and said (to my chagrin), "You are a good portrait photographer but you will never shoot fashion." He then gave me his card to take to Rick Staehling who was the art director at Vancouver Magazine. Shortly after I quit my job at Tilden and became a freelancer.Except for once (a spread in Vancouver Magazine) I never shot fashion and I was jealous of all those photographers like Howard Fry who photographed beautiful women and were paid to do it. For some years in the late 80s to early 90s I shared a huge studio in Yaletown with Denis Montalbetti who did a lot of fashion. In particular I was jealous of his shooting the Vancouver super model Karen Campbell. One night in particular Karen Campbell was posing for him while in a corner I was taking portraits of Gavin Walker with his sax and Kool cigarettes. As much as I like and liked Gavin Walker I felt shortchanged.In May 1989 John Lekich and I decided to correct the situation by offering the Georgia Straight an article on a beautiful blonde ( who happened to be Karen Campbell). The Intro article saw the light of day. In those days it was enough to be beautiful and blonde. Or at least it was enough for editor Charles Campbell (no relation!). 
Shortly before Levy died of AIDS in the early 90s he summoned me for a favour. He wanted me to shoot a couple of nude men for a calendar contest for a gay club called Neighbour's. The winner of the contest (one of the nude men)was going to have an expenses paid trip to Hawaii. During the shoot Levy confessed to me, "I was wrong about you. You are an excellent fashion photographer." Without him knowing his correction came too late to ruin my photographic career. In Vancouver, with the loss of Woodward's, Eaton's and Bay catalogues, had I been a fashion photographer I would not be in business now.
The only record of Davis's trip to Vancouver was my little picture (the b+w one) in the Straight and the Vancouver Sun made no mention of the man. Davis had been very cooperative in posing for me and even went as far of going for my idea for the Greek hero look with ivy around his head. As a Canadian he did suggest to me that nobody was a prophet in his own country. I keep seeing his picture in the National Geographic and as he rockets into further fame I can at least enjoy here the cover that never was. Davis and I had a lot of fun doing the table top of his things on my living room floor. His luggage had been lost so all he could bring was his razor, passport, business card, Swiss Army watch and I used my Nikon F-2 which was exactly like his. I remember that the folks at the Straight had wanted me to photograph Davis as he cleared customs to show the world traveler in action. Even in 2001 it would have taken me weeks to get the necessary permission.
Wade Davis Wade Davis - Explorer-in-Residence The Egyptian Restaurant
Friday, March 09, 2007 
Around 1955 my grandmother worked in the Filipino Embassy in Mexico City. When the new consul, Johnny Hormillosa arrived my grandmother took him out to see the sites of the city. In one of the restaurants they visited, she had been most embarrased when in his Filipino Spanish, Hormillosa had asked for a clean glass with water. A few weeks later Jhonny (he insisted in spelling his name that way, but then his son was called Robin after Nigaraguan poet Rubén Darío) asked my grandmother to take him to that wonderful "Egyptian restaurant" (he pronounced that Egyptzian restaowrunt). My grandmother was all confused until Jhonny described the Egyptian costumes of the waitresses. It was only then that my grandmother realized that the waitresses of the ubiquitous Sanborns restaurant/drugstores wear a uniform based on those of the Tehuanas, the Mexican Indian women of the Tehuantepec Istmus. They could be seen as Egyptian if the viewer were the Filipino consul.Last year when I photographed Pam in Nora's living room I asked Nora to decorate it Egyptian style and to make up Pam as an Egyptian/Coptic Madonna. I couldn't explain to either Pam or Nora that Jhonny would have approved.
Sanborns Morelia
Sanborns Cancun
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