A Profile

alexwh
alexwh
Jul 20, 2017 · 2 min read
Photograph — Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

Sometime around 1988 my Rosemary took me to a meeting of the Vancouver Rose Society at the VanDusen Botanical Garden’s Floral Hall. We sat in hard chairs and listened to boring minutes of the previous meeting. We then saw 100 bad slides of close-ups of roses taken in harsh contrasty sunlight. I looked at my Rosemary and said, “You brought me to this?”

If you now jump to 2017, as a photographer I might be invited (I will prepare my excuses so I can say, “No.”) to a show of digital images projected with a digital projector.

The theme of the show might be city landscapes during the day or at night. There would be many sunsets and pictures of fireworks. Some of those landscapes might be narrow horizontal views of a dramatic sky and the same upside down on a pristine lake. There would be oohs and aahs.

My point is that after 100 of those even comfortable chairs might seem hard.

On the other hand I could see 100 profiles of women and clamour for more.

This is a profile of my Ukrainian friend Yuliya. There is something of her face in which I see (my opinion only) a person from a country without mountains that has been ravaged by the back and forth trampling of armies of Mongols, Chinese, Germans and Russians. This may be the reason why part of her beauty is a universal visage of patient suffering.


Originally published at blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com.

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alexwh

Written by

alexwh

Into Bunny Watson. I am a Vancouver-based magazine photographer/writer. I have a popular daily blog which can be found at:http://t.co/yf6BbOIQ alexwh@telus.net

Photographs, Photography & Words

For Photo Essays That Don’t Fit Anywhere Else

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