Werner Herzog - an apparition?

Once, sometime perhaps in February of hmmm 2009(?) I have gone for a stroll in the direction of Nicastro - a good local Italian delicatessen, well stocked in good variety of quality cheese and all array of pricey charcuterie... A place you can order a sandwich or a cup of aromatic espresso.
While waiting for our salami to be sliced I saw a man to the left of me. He ordered a sandwich.
OMG, I know this voice. He wore a cap, was tall and but since I have never seen Werner Herzog "al dente" I have decided it must have been him.
Maestro himself in Ottawa!

http://www.thestickingplace.com/books/books/werner-herzog/extracts/

At the bleakest of bleak, at the very end of February or March, this god forsaken place needs a miracle. I behaved graciously and did not bother the man with any fan-like approaches.
My heart pounded, but a man - even a genius - deserves to order his sandwich in peace.

But I left the little delicatessen with the feeling that Ottawa has become a different place, a place on the map of he history of art and all great things that matter.
It no longer mattered whether this man was really the great W. Herzog, the director of Firzgerraldo, of Woyzeck, of The Enigma of Caspar Hauser, of Stoszek, Aquirre and Cobra, and famous documentaries.
I have experienced a miracle of faith, of inspiration.
I had amused myself with the excitement of this miniscule event and of the intense mystification that follows, of its undeniable, colourful pleasantness.
I guess, in the middle of winter blahs one needs to invent.

I have later tried to find out on Google whether he might have really been here.
Well, never know, he could have stopped at the Carleton U Film Dept or to visit a friend on a way to the Toronto Film Festival where he was a juror that year.
Regardless, the strength of my inspired belief had made the day shine 'til dawn, and Ottawa feels like a much bigger city now.

Not content with voyaging up the Amazon or making acclaimed documentaries about grizzly men, it seems that Werner Herzog also helps out Hollywood movie stars in peril.
When Walk the Line star Joaquin Phoenix overturned his car on a winding Los Angeles sideroad last Thursday, it was the 63-year-old German director who sprang to his rescue.
Phoenix, who received a best actor Oscar nomination earlier this week, flipped his car over when the brakes failed on a road above Sunset Boulevard. As he lay, disorientated, in the wreckage, he heard a gentle tap on the passenger window.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/feb/03/news2

More posts on my favourite film director here:
Herzog - Essentially Baroque Artist
and here:
Death in Five Voices

Nostalgia and the Lies of the Past

Like cars or buildings or computers, the images that shape the ways we see the world inevitably deteriorate and lose value. Spiritual entropy erodes them. To quote Neil Young quoting an ad of long ago, rust never sleeps.(...) From time to time it must be reviewed, a process that may require dubious cultural strategies.

This has been written by a senior and prominent Canadian journalist whom I respect very much, Robert Fulford. I have taken this quote from an essay of his published by an absolutely great Canadian publication - Queens Quarterly Review in the Spring issue, 2010.
Being a visual professional I am compelled to pay attention to the instruments of visual representation, as much as to everything else...
So my body heats up when reading the author's observations, commenting on the visual clichés, inevitable baggage of travel photography:

    "One day in 1953 (...) seeing Paris for the first time, I climbed 380 steps to the balustrade of Notre Dame Cathedral . There I took a photograph that managed to be both appallingly hackneyed and historically misguided. It has since been lost, fortunately, but I remember that it showed a gargoyle gazing over the rooftops of Paris.
Within the next day or two it became obvious to me that the image I had chosen was a ubiquitous  cliché in a city long notorious for visual clichés.
(...)
Years later it also became clear that my picture was taken under a false impression, the assumption (still shard by most visitors, apparently) that those gargoyles, being attached to a thirteenth-century Gothic cathedral, are therefore thirteenth-century gargoyles
(...) They are, in short, modern.
Installed in millions of imaginations by generations of photographers, they distribute a pervasive falsehood, the perfect stone embodiment of Voltaire's remark that history consists of lies on which we agree. They represent the often questionable role of nostalgia in or encounter with half-understood ancient buildings.
(...)
(...)
    In the middle of the nineteenth century Notre Dame was crumbling, approaching the status of a ruin. It was most famous for Victor Hugo's 1831 novel about Quasimodo, the hunchback. (...)
France spent a sizable fortune on the four-decade project of bringing Notre Dame back to life. Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, the principal architect (...) made Notre Dame into what he thought it should be not what it had been. Reverence for the past surrendered to the ego of the architect and the pride of a nation that would soon be seeing itself as the centre of the modern world.


I loved it!

Jules R. Villemaire - photographic prints

It came to mind and so I must mention one dear working relationship that I we have developed over the years, it is with a local photographer, Jules R. Villemaire.
When I reminisce about Jules' work certain peculiarities of the Canada's Capital city of Ottawa cultural life need and bit of background and explanation.
Our region is a home to many interesting creative personalities, but it is not always easily accessible and often difficult to follow.
Our Capital is made up of of often divided into two cities: Ottawa (South of the Ottawa River) and Gatineau (North of the river).
The divide is not only geographical but it is deeply historic, with Ottawa physically in the province of Ontario and connected to predominantly English-speaking population.
Gatineu is a part of the province of Quebec, where cultural and political life is strongly representative of French related issues, which in Canada have a lot of meanings and nuances, which are not always easy to grasp.

To make the long story short, Jules R. Villemaire is a French-Ontarian and predominantly French speaker and over many years of his French theatre-connected life as a photographer the information about his work is mostly accessible in French and - in my opinion - deserving a lot more visibility in the English-speaking art scene.
http://jrvillemaire.com/corps/index.html


Language divides aside (as you can guess I am whining because my French is rather rudimentary) I must say that Jules is a remarkable portrait artist.
He is not probing our souls, nope, he is interested in our BODY, our appearance, in our face, and very much in our movement.

I have worked with Jules for years on several projects - printing and finishing photographic files.
The first series, produced about 10 years ago consisted of remarkable compositions of body movement and arranged object.
Images were produced at approx. 1Mx1M size and printed on Polyester film, with thin layer of polycarbonate, scratch resistant laminating film and mounted on 1/8" Sintra board.
All works were framed by the artist.

from Corps à corps

Above is an example of this series.
I am yet to locate an actual photograph from one of the venues, the exposition at the National Art Centre in Ottawa and I will post it later.

Another series followed few years later and dwelled, in my opinion, on the practicality of glamour.
What did I just say? I don't know, perhaps that's what it was.
Non-commercial women models posed in make-up, beautifully styled and almost glamorously photographed. Yet, every pose show that tinge of vulnerability - 100% woman, 100% all of us.  
Gorgeous to the last drop....

The photographs were composed by the artist within the cadre, the outline of the canvas.
All printed on white matte artist canvas, stretched on gallery (2") stretcher bars, frameless, with background white canvas on the edges of each work.

from …de connivence

Further visual memory lane - Roy Gerrard

Further down the visual memory lane:

Over the years I have kept a number of issues of a wonderful publication called Cricket - the magazine for Children. 

Yes, I love children books and illustrations, for years I have moved around and kept my son's early literary collection. Most of the books are now given away, but I hang on to several issues of Cricket.

I am continuously charmed by the cover illustrations, without fail...

Here is one of them, as seen through the shadows of my table-top fern.

The front cover illustration, mesmerizing and enchanting castle and a dwarf knight is by an English illustrator Roy Gerrard. It is wonderful work and my "inner child" is not going to let this cover go in a hundred years.

Gerard Roy died at the age of 62 in 1997 from heart attack, as noted by New York Times.

I  can see that "Rosie and the Rustlers" is available on-line from McMillan.
One reviewer said: Praise for Rosie and the Rustlers
"The Old West has never been more appealing than in this rip-roaring tale of ranchers vs. rustlers [with] clever, charming, and detailed watercolor illustrations." --School Library Journal

I haven't read it but the cover looks so yummy.

Reminiscing and dwelling...

My Studio is now again located in the Centertown and I take the occasion to reminisce.
Reminiscing and dwelling in visual history is definitely one of my favourite pastimes...
In the past twenty years I had close encounters - have studied under, worked with, worked for, collaborated, assisted, admired, cheered for and followed with enthusiasm a great number of creative individuals.
As time passes my views on and appreciation of working with people did not diminish.

Every so often I will be showing a glimpse of the connecting fabric of those relationships and link to those creative people. 

Irresistible part of our visual history - L.Daguerre, daguerotype, street view

Imagine the length of time required to take this photograph, it must have been made early in the morning, the shadows of the building are long, not much activity on the street yet...