I wanted to post a short tribute to my father, Ramón, as a photographer. He was an avid amateur photographer. He taught us (that is my brother and me) the basics of developing and enlarging in black and white, back around 1961. We were given a box camera as a birthday present in 1961, and later a Retina II which we used from ages 10 to 14 approximately. We also helped in his small business, developing tens of rolls each week, mostly 120 Verichrome Pan and equivalent films for customers, and doing contact prints and enlargements. This is how I started in photography and got my fluency with B&W film!
Here is Ramón in about 1970, holding tight his Contarex and carrying those heavy Zeiss lenses. The picture was taken by a friend of his, in the west area of Montevideo bay, close to the Cerro. Sorry for the poor focus, it is scanned from paper, and the original is not the best.
Ramon left a large negative archive, tens of thousands of frames of 35mm B&W. I will try to work with the archive, with the idea of scanning and cataloging, but it will take time. In the meanwhile, a few scanned from paper which he kept in a box - his "keepers", I guess.
I remember that Ramon won second or third place in national contests with these two shots, of which he was very proud.
Dog and cat (scanned from textured paper)
Portrait of Eulogio (I believe this to be a tour-de-force with KB14 and Beutler, which he was fond of for some time).
One of his shots that I like best is this portrait of his mother, taken around 1964. Grandma was a character indeed.
Ramon liked equipment, as most of us amateurs do, but he was not rich and chose very carefully. When buying a new main camera he always sold or traded his previous one, and he always bought used. I usually took his cameras from the closet to play with them, when Ramon was away, a behavior that did not help my skin condition in the area where you sit. He had a Leica, then a Retina Reflex, then a Contarex, then a Nikon. In his later years he used a film Canon P&S too, but after about 2000 his eyesight got worse, and he almost stopped taking pictures.
Besides photography and work, Ramon was an athlete who played pro soccer, including a brief stint in the national team (the Celeste) in 1942-44, which in my country is close to being a god, and a trial period in Gremio, in Brazil. He was a striker (the fabled #10), short (a little over 5 ft) but compensated with excellent ball handling, agility, speed, and a clear mind for the game. He would have made a fortune playing these days.
Ramon was also quite talkative, always telling stories. During his several periods in the hospital in the last few years, he enchanted every nurse with his tales.
Thanks for looking, I needed to do this post.
