Rebecca Wenham — Cleopatra at the Cello
A frequent repeating theme in my blogs is that a photographer is much like one of those American gunfighters of the 19th century, stars of many Hollywood films. Any one of them was as good as his last gunfight. We can guess the consequence if they were a tad slow or their eyes were not as sharp.
A photographer is as good as his (I’m a guy) last photograph. Those who are here can judge from these two Fuji Instant Film prints, and one reversed peel from one of them which I took today of Vancouver cellist Rebecca (Becky Wenham). I also shot colour negative film on my Mamiya RB-67 and with my Fuji X-E1. They will all be sharper than these. I still like the inherent look of this film which is sadly discontinued.
The easiest process for failure in a photographic session with a person is not to have some ideas on who to proceed. In my case I seem to have a long history of taking portraits of cellists including two male cellists. The problem with portraits of musicians is that someone has done before any pose you might think is original. In fact to photograph a musician involves copying a cliché and hiding (if that is possible in this 21stcentury) its provenance.
In the case of Becky Wenham I had two ideas that I had previously explored with American cellist Laura Kramer and of Seattle baroque cellist Juliana Soltis.
What is most interesting is that the Laura Kramer profile shot was instantly modified to perfection by Becky who simply raised her cello higher. To me it resembles a profile of an Egyptian queen possibly even Cleopatra.
Rebecca Wenham has many gigs. She plays for the VSO, for the Vancouver Opera Orchestra and (important to my interests) with Marc Destrube’s Microcosmos Quartet. They have been known to play lots of those most difficult Bartok Quartets. We laughed in today’s shoot citing the photographs with the ring flash (the second one here) as being Bartokish!
Originally published at blog.alexwaterhousehayward.com.
