What Is Wrong with Loving Canada?

MR. DERRY:

Distinguished guests and members of The Empire Club of Canada: The first discovery of photography was almost one hundred and fifty years ago - 1837 - when the Frenchman, Louis Daguerre, produced a plate with a brilliant, detailed picture of his studio, using his new invention, which he named "Daguerrotype." Interestingly, an Englishman - Fox Talbot - had simultaneously been developing what came to be known as photography.

Daguerrotype and photography rapidly became the rage in Europe and North America. Since that time photography has evolved from mere reproduction to a long-acknowledged art form. A significant contribution, particularly in the area of landscape photography, has been made over the last thirty years through the work of our guest speaker.

However, from the start I am doing Roloff Beny somewhat of a disservice. Let me return to this point in a minute. We think of him as a world-famous photographer, described in Connoisseur magazine as "among the master travel photographers of our time" and in the London Daily Telegraph as "there being no finer photographer of Landscape than Roloff Beny."

This is the current evolution of almost thirty years of photographic work which has been recognized through many major public exhibitions in Toronto, Rome, London, New York, Paris, and many other cities, including a particularly important show currently in Warsaw. We have seen his photographic talents exquisitely portrayed in his many beautiful books on Japan, India, Ceylon, Italy, and Persia, to mention only a few. His newly published book, The Gods of Greece, with text by Arianna Stassinopoulos, who we are most pleased to have with us today, is as splendid a book as we have become accustomed to expect.

I started by saying that I was doing Mr. Beny a disservice. This is because all of this introduction so far has been focused on his photography. Yet prior to his photographic career, which really got started in his early thirties, Roloff Beny spent fifteen years as a painter, during which time he had a most impressive twenty-five one-man exhibitions in Europe and North America. His paintings and graphic art are included in the collections of many world-renowned public galleries.

Roloff Beny currently lives in Rome and Toronto. He grew up on the Prairies - Medicine Hat - and studied Fine Art at the University of Toronto before further study at State University of Iowa, Columbia University, The Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, and The American School of Classical Studies, Athens, Greece. This was the groundwork for the accomplishments that I have just described, and it is not surprising that they have been recognized through a large number of honours and awards, including the Order of Canada, an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Lethbridge, awards four times at the Leipzig International Book Fair, and most recently, the Cronica Italiana, a prize established to recognize outstanding contributions to the visual arts.

Roloff Beny's topic today is "What Is Wrong With Loving Canada?" and I cannot help but reflect on his centennial book, To Everything There Is a Season, which so beautifully presents many aspects of Canada and demonstrates one man's feeling for it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome Dr. Roloff Beny.

DR. BENY:

Mr. Chairman, members of The Empire Club, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

Beauty buds from mire

and I, a singer in season, observe Death is a name for beauty not in use.

This is a quotation from one of my favourite Canadian poets, Irving Layton. To those who know my books, my professional life has been a celebration of beauty - and that by deliberate choice.

The author's great obstacle after making a book is finding a title. However, when I was asked to provide a title for this honoured occasion by the Chairman, Mr. Derry, without even thinking I said, "What's Wrong with Loving Canada?" But, dear guests, at the end of this event you might feel a more appropriate title would have been "What's Wrong with Loving Roloff?" But we shall see.

Most speakers begin with a little joke to relax the audience. Here's mine: "What does a grape say when you step on it?" "Nothing. . it just gives a little wine."

This September I returned to Canada after covering many thousands of kilometres, after five perilous weeks on the roads - I mean jeep tracks of black lava - through the glaciers and omnipresent waterfalls of Iceland, where there are even fewer people per square kilometre than in Canada. I am truly glad to be home and here.

In Hollywood, about twenty years ago, I met Hedda Hopper, who was so influential she could make or break a career by just leaving a name out of her column. Later, she wrote, "All my life I've wanted to meet someone who actually came from Medicine Hat! Now one of my life's ambitions is realized!"

Medicine Hat is indeed where I was born, although I didn't "choose to be born there." That's a half-quotation of mine from an old interview, taken out of context by a minister in the Alberta government when he was hotly debating the province's non-acquisition of my archives a few years ago. His peculiar logic is recorded in Hansard. One reason he said the Alberta government should not preserve "his stuff [that is, my photographs], let alone pay for it, is that the honourable Doctor didn't even elect to be born in Medicine Hat." I'd like to know how one can elect where to be born. If they've discovered that secret in Alberta they should certainly let us all know.

Both my parents were naturalized Canadians, having both been born in New York, so I am a first-generation Canadian, but first or fifth, Canadian is Canadian, and "What's Wrong with Loving Canada?" My horizons have always stretched beyond Canada, but my vision began here and I have always returned here. I even bought a house in decaying Yorkville as a wedding present for the girl I was courting, that is, was courting over thirty years ago. I didn't get the girl - perhaps Yorkville wasn't smart enough for her - but I still have the house and I am still trying to find the girl to go with it. Yorkville might impress her more now.

At the age of thirteen, I was photographing nature - gopher holes, rattlesnakes, daffodils in the snow - but on May 26, 1939, I took my first people photograph. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth stopped in Medicine Hat - if only on a flag-decked railway siding during their first state visit to Canada. As a King Scout, I was presented to the King... and boldly took a snap! Years later, at Clarence House in London, I met and photographed Queen Elizabeth (now the Queen Mother); her lilac costume and radiant smile relaxed me. I amused Her Majesty by relating this story of the first royal photograph I had ever taken. The Queen Mother asked what kind of camera I had used. When I replied, "A box Brownie," she remarked, "Ahh, and a very reliable camera too." Gathering my courage, I continued and described a new book project - the photographs I had taken of people during forty years and in more than forty countries. I had hoped to open the book with that early - for me - historical photograph but tragically, the negative was long lost.

Prophetically, the Queen Mother said, "Surely you will find it, or your mother has hidden it away."

One year later, while on location in Spain, I received the news that my mother had died. I rushed home for the funeral. In Medicine Hat, my mother was laid to rest under a veritable blanket of wild roses - her name was Rosalie. Afterwards, friends gathered, among them my former Scout leader, Colonel Bruce Buchanan, whom I hadn't seen for forty years. He had flown from Ottawa, a surprise and a great comfort to me. Quietly drawing me aside, he said he had brought a small gift of sentimental value - and behold, there it was - my lost negative along with a print, hand-coloured by me, of the King and Queen. My friend, having jealously preserved the negative and print for all those years, asked mildly, "Would you like to have these?"

Ironically, earlier that same year, in Tehran, where I had been working for years, and where I was completing the final stages of my second and last book on Iran, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, was laying the foundation for the new British School of Persian Studies. A terracotta brick was poised on wet cement; with a wooden mallet, the Queen Mother struck as I snapped. She said, "I declare this brick well and truly laid." Bang! Afterwards, at tea, believe it or not, she asked me if the long-lost negative had emerged. Sadly, I confessed, not yet, but what a memory she has, I thought.

And now, as they used to say on the radio dramas of the thirties, here is the rest of the story. This time, at St. James' Palace, at the wedding reception for Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, I had yet another meeting with the Queen Mother. I told her of my mother's passing which had led to the magical materialization of my phantom negative. "You see," she said, "I knew your mother would find it for you - somehow!" So, this photograph will open my book on people, soon to be published, if I can decide on a title. (I now have a list of twenty-seven definites and nineteen runners-up.) If anyone here would like to submit a title, you may do so after the lecture. How are titles born? The title of my third book, Pleasure of Ruins, was a gift to me from the great Dame herself, Rose Macaulay.

The title of my first book, The Thrones of Earth and Heaven, was hotly fought by my English publishers. They felt it poetic and obscure. "Where did that come from?" they asked, and wished to call it simply The Mediterranean. In fact, I was very close to the deadline when I had to have chosen the title. I picked up my tattered copy of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound and it fell open to these very words of Shelley - "the thrones of earth and heaven." Destiny had spoken.

Destiny spoke again when I was in search of a title for my first volume on Iran. One sparkling day, I was flying in a small plane with Empress Farah, down to her secret swimming hole near a dam in central Iran. After an infinity of sand and rock, a myriad of lakes appeared and suddenly the vast turquoise basin of the dam itself. The Empress turned to me and said, "Dr. Beny, that is the Persia I love." I replied breathlessly, "Yes, a veritable bridge of turquoise." Without hesitation, she ordered champagne and toasted, "Here's to the title of our book, Persia: Bridge of Turquoise.

I have always been obsessed with the elements and seasons, the Shah was obsessed with destiny, and Persia was renamed Iran by his father. So, the title of my companion volume, Iran: Elements of Destiny, was poignantly too prophetic. I didn't win the title bout with my book on Japan. My title, taken from a Japanese haiku, was Dust Before the Wind; that is, until the International Book Fair in Frankfurt, where a cartel of publishers changed it to Japan in Colour. (Ugh.) However, you just can't fight seven international publishers, and the book did win a gold medal for being "the most beautiful book in the world" that year.

India simply spoke for herself. Nothing is more evocative than that one word.

From 1964 on, I was commuting between Japan and Canada. To remedy my long absence from home, I made seven in-depth trips back, purposely approaching Canada as new territory. I gathered images from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Arctic to the longest undefended border in the world - an area so vast that it made my travels in the whole world over seem compact by comparison.

Another difference was that Canada seemed so empty and so abstract in its beauty, while the rest of my chosen world of ancient culture was so richly layered in architecture and art, both deeply sacred and sensuously profane. What, I asked myself, can I do about Canada? Of course, I can photograph the aurora borealis, prairies of golden wheat, sunflower farms in Ontario, the Shangri-La peaks of the Great Divide, and the unique neo-Gothic grain elevators in the west, and in the east one of the oldest geological formations in the world, the Pre-Cambrian Shield. As yet, the glittering modern architecture of our cities was not so evident - now, it's a real gift to any photographer.

Natural beauty was everywhere, especially in the Northwest Territories and the Arctic, and I know I must not overexpose that unique chemistry which turns our maple leaves into cycloramas of flame (very showy). I also turned to high-tech industry, underground and aboveground; bridges, dams, psychedelic farm machinery - and found it equally beautiful.

Thanks to someone sitting in this room today, my Canada book was guaranteed superb-quality production. It was designed in Italy, printed in France, bound in Holland, and simultaneously published in England, the United States, and Canada. This exotic foreign production upset the nationalists, all except for the Secretary of State, Judy LaMarsh, who flew to Rome with a few pet ministers and chose the book as a centennial gift. It hit the best-seller list, and was sold out before Christmas. Three further editions were printed in Europe and sold out. Well, my renewed love affair with Canada was in full flower ... nothing was wrong with loving Canada. Then, the Canadian firm Longmans decided on a fifth printing and produced a disastrous facsimile here in Canada, at double the price, but even that is out of print. And how did I find the title for this book? I sorted through my past inspirations as a painter. A series of my engravings based on verses from the Book of Ecclesiastes had won me a Guggenheim fellowship, and this brought me back to New York from Paris. I found a Charles Addams penthouse on Park Avenue and New York was my headquarters for some ten years - until I discovered my real home on the Tiber in 1957. In between, I had frozen in a frescoed palace in Florence for two years, and practised being a Bohemian in Paris for another two. Each September was spent in Venice with Peggy Guggenheim, whom I had met in 1948. But more of that in my people book. However, that encounter was the beginning of a thirtyyear friendship that always included a traditional autumn in Venice in Peggy's unheated, private museum of modern art on the Grand Canal. One night when I complained there wasn't even a rug on the freezing marble floor by my bed, Peggy cracked, "Where do you think you are, at the Ritz?" My conviction that I was an artist who would die young, like Shelley, Keats, Chopin, was bom of those poignantly romantic Venetian interludes. Age thirty instead found me with several major exhibitions behind me, and more to come. Canada, however, seemed a long, long way away during those exotic sojourns.

Italy became my adopted home. I fell hopelessly in love with my curve of the Tiber. The best of old Rome was at my feet and there I am still planted - maple trees from Muskoka and all.

From this base I explored Japan and Canada. The Italian climate, love of life, and cuisine were a perfect contrast to the ordered, severe perfection of manners in Japan and a graphic contrast to the rugged naivete of the cross-cultures of Canada, a country forever in search of an identity. I found the artists of Canada shy of self-criticism, and it seemed almost a sin to be successful.

But, back to the title. I decided, with the invaluable guidance of Milton Wilson, a fellow graduate at Trinity, to use the poets and writers of Canada as my stimulation and the seasons of the country to colour my palette ... and then I had my title ... the first line of Ecclesiastes: To Everything There Is a Season.

By this time I had known, loved, and lived in Italy for twenty-five years. My archives were bulging but there was no book. President Saragat, who had received a copy of my Canada book in Ottawa, approached me at his annual garden party at the Quirinale and exclaimed, "What's wrong with loving Italy? Why are you avoiding your adopted country?" The title Roloff Beny in Italy was inevitable - simple as that.

As you know from my earlier remarks, I have not settled on a title for my book on people. I strongly favour Entrances and Exits, but my publishers are afraid I'll exit before the publication date ... so many times did I think I was ending my career. In 1978, I was still under the spell of Persia - two books were already published and I had three more under way - but in 1979, when Iran as I knew it vanished, I had none. Those cherished projects were sadly abandoned. Where again would I find such an angel and such a budget for creative bookmaking? What an act to follow!

However, I soothed myself with a nostalgic return to my first love, the Mediterranean. President Anwar Sadat had long ago invited me to do a book on Egypt and now I went, retracing steps of years before - but now picking and clicking my way, temple by temple, up and down the Nile, from the Sudan to Alexandria. But, tragically, the world lost him and I lost Egypt too.

Yet I persevered. Roman Algeria had been a missing link in my chain of lands surrounding the Mediterranean. I travelled there, and also to Tunisia on commission to photograph the second-greatest mosque of Islam for Time-Life. Morocco fell into my lap when I was invited to visit with the Shah and Empress of Iran, then living there in exile. Spain was made easier for me by ex-King Constantine of Greece who provided me with an introduction to his sister, Queen Sofia, and King Juan Carlos, all of whom shared the shock waves of the fall of Persia.

This string of royalty and heads of state (I have dropped these names resoundingly, as one reporter said, like buckshot) were all real people, often encountered during my Persian years, and were all splendid material for a forthcoming book. A varied cast of people have walked through my lens.

A surprise commission kept me at home on the Tiber for one year: The Churches of Rome, only ninety churches out of the about three hundred and ninety available. Just a week ago, twenty eager architectural students from Waterloo and Carleton universities brought their copies (required reading) to my Tiber terrace studio in Rome, savoured my panoramic view, and sipped Chianti, while I signed their books. Those are the book collectors I love, the juniors.

My cameras became restless again, but where should I go? I felt that after three books inspired by Ulysses and the classical world, I had drained even this rich reservoir of culture, but then the gregarious English publisher, Lord Weidenfeld, invited me to lunch to meet Arianna Stassinopoulos at his home on the Thames. It was love at first sight and we knew we were to be a team. Over fresh asparagus (or was it the rack of lamb?), The Gods of Greece was conceived, and our child was born this autumn. Here's to Arianna! I believe, honoured guests, we should recharge our glasses and toast Arianna.

Now, follow me on a brief and frankly sybaritic journey through my archives. For these unpublished images (I warn you, there are eighty!) thousands of kilometres were traced and retraced through hostile seasons; often inhospitable camp beds and endless nightmare airports were endured...

Dr. Beny then gave a ten-minute journey through his archives of slides, showing eighty unpublished images captured over twenty years in twenty countries. The slides shown are listed below:

1. Sri Lanka - 1969
An offering of lotus flowers at Anaradhapura.
2. Japan - 1966
Children's toys at local festival in Kyoto.
3. India - 1967
A flower mosaic celebrating a spring festival.
4. Sri Lanka - 1969
A Buddhist shrine on the southeast coast.
5. India - 1972
Women gathering jasmine in Udaipur, Rajasthan.
6. Sri Lanka - 1970
Bikku Training School in Colombo.
7. Japan- 1966
Sacred carp in a Zen garden at Beppu, Kyushu Island.
8. Japan- 1966
Ceremonial carp at a Beppu festival.
9. India - 1972
Pilgrims bathing in the Sacred Lake, Pushkar, Rajasthan.
10. Japan - 1966
Three women sunning themselves, surprisingly with parasols, on a riverbed in Shirakowa.
11. India - 1972
A bizarre bazaar of psychedelically coloured powders, Ujjain Bazaar.
12. India - 1972
A local circus and a bizarre act at Ahmedabad.
13. Italy - 1970
Flags of the contestants at the Palio in Siena.
14. Sri Lanka - 1970
Prayer flags before a Buddhist Stupa near Trincomalee.
15. Bulgaria - 1980
An embroidered saint's tomb cover in the monastery at Rila.
16. Italy - 1972
A tomb in the Verano Cemetery, Rome.
17. Sri Lanka - 1970
Detail of a reclining Buddha with fresco depicting Buddhist monks giving homage.
18. India - 1972
Frieze of sacred "Sati Hands" of the royal ladies who sacrifice themselves in the flames to preserve their honour, Bikaner, Rajasthan.
19. India - 1972
The Shiva Temple at Abu in Rajasthan.
20. Canada- 1965
A cemetery in the province of Quebec.
21. Iceland - 1983
A typical church of wrought iron at Borg, on the southeast coast.
22. Iceland - 1983
A frozen waterfall, one of hundreds encountered en route.
23. Iran - 1977
Natural-gas flares at Ahvaz.
24. Japan - 1966
A sacred lake at Chinoike-Jigoku Temple, Beppu, Kyushu Island.
25. Egypt- 1979
Sudanese basket bazaar in the Aswan Souk at night.
26. Iceland - 1983
A pattern of shells on the beach in the northwest fiords.
27. Iran - 1974
Frosted sand at dawn near the sacred shrine of Mahan, central Persia.
28. Spain - 1972
Lace fans on sale, Seville.
29. Canada- 1966
Peggy's Cove, on the east coast.
30. Canada -1964
A field of grain, which speaks for itself.
31. India - 1970
Boys on an ancient water treadmill in the Deccan.
32. Canada- 1967
The Buckminster Fuller United States Pavilion under construction for Expo '67, Montreal.
33. Italy - 1973
Fountain at Villa Lante, near Viterbo.
34. Italy - 1972
Ceremonial gondola on the lagoon in Venice.
35. Italy - 1968
Detail of bronze statue: Marcus Aurelius on the Capitoline Hill, Rome.
36. Canada- 1966
A signpost at Coppermine, above the Arctic Circle.
37. Japan -1966
Miyajima, a Torii, or sacred gateway.
38. Italy - 1970
Peggy Guggenheim's Palazzo Venier dei Leoni: a plaster cast of a sculpture by Giacometti.
39. Sri Lanka - 1969
Medieval Bodhisattva in gilt-bronze.
40. Greece - 1981
Mycenaean wall painting from Thera, the National Museum.
41. Greece - 1981
Cycladic statue, seated figure playing harp, the National Museum.
42. Israel - 1966
The Sea of Galilee.
43. England - 1981
View through wrought-iron grille on Brighton Pier.
44. Italy - 1972
Christmas creche, Naples.
45. Spain - 1979
Detail from the El Pilar Treasury at Zaragoza.
46. Iran - 1977
Interior of the Great Shrine at Mashad.
47. Turkey - 1963
Istanbul - Dolmabahce Palace.
48. England - 1981
Brighton Pier, a threatened landmark.
49. France - 1981
Nimes.
50. Turkey - 1963
Roman Heliopolos on the Anatolian Coast.
51. Turkey - 1963
Classical temple fragments at Ephesus.
52. Japan - 1966
Shrine at Ise.
53. Egypt- 1978
Pyramids and Sphinx at Giza, Son et Lumiere.
54. Tunisia - 1966
Great Mosque at Kairouan.
55. Italy - 1980
Sant'Andrea al Quirinale by Bernini, in Rome.
56. Jordan - 1964
Rock-cut temple at Petra.
57. Iraq - 1963
Sassanian mud palace at Ctesiphon.
58. Israel - 1963
Medieval supporting arches.
59. Greece - 1981
Pronaos of fallen temple at Corinth.
60. Egypt- 1978
Inner Sanctuary of Luxor Temple.
61. Canada -1982
Grain elevators, like a white Louise Nevelson sculpture, Alberta.
62. Canada -1965
Grain elevators.
63. Canada- 1980
Calgary city centre, Alberta.
64. Turkey - 1962
Reflected Mosque, Istanbul.
65. Israel - 1962
The Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem.
66. Greece - 1980
Santorini, in the Cycladic Islands.
67. Greece - 1980
Cape Sounion, Temple of Poseidon - jacket subject of The Gods of Greece.
68. England - 1982
Across the Thames in winter.
69. Canada -1982
Ottawa, Houses of Parliament in winter.
70. Italy - 1975
Rome, the view from my Tiber terrace, Santa Maria in Cosmedin.
71. United States - 1982
Gigi Woolworth with Frankenstein in Hollywood.
72. Iran - 1978
Myself with a statue of Kamran Diba, the architect, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran.
73. Canada -1982
Ottawa, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau with his sons at Harrington Lake.
74. Canada- 1982
Governor General Edward Schreyer with his youngest son and friend.
75. Italy - 1980
In the Piazza Venezia on a quiet day.
76. Spain - 1979
Toledo Gate.
77. India - 1969
Peggy Guggenheim at Rameswaram Temple.
78. Italy - 1981
A hoarding in Venice.
79. Turkey - 1963
Changing of the Guard at the Ataturk Monument, Ankara.
80. Italy - 1972
Alone at last in Sicily.

The appreciation of the audience was expressed by Ronald Goodall, a Director of The Empire Club of Canada.

Later in the Club's year, the members were saddened to hear of the untimely death of Dr. Beny in Rome on March 16, 1984.