February 16, 2023
As in ‘Before Covid,’ right? Time has been playing tricks since long before humans and dinosaurs romped together through the 1960s film, ‘One Million Years B.C.‘ and especially since the pandemic hit. Has it really been three years since the phrase ‘wet market‘ came to our attention and we all went nuts trying to find hand sanitizer? We all have our own personal mental milestones regarding the pandemic and the past few years generally. The latest spree shootings, for example, brought to mind the massive March for Our Lives that students organized in the aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. That was almost five years ago, in 2018.
And who can forget the surreal Presidential campaign in 2016, now seven years ago, when candidate Trump dissed Senator McCain for having been a POW and boasted about grabbing women by the pussy? Some of us are still bewildered by the willingness of some of our fellow Americans to discount the man’s frequently bizarre and boorish behavior and vote for him to be America’s President.
Nevertheless, one temporal marker that has a huge before and after aspect to it for many people is 9/11. We even have a catchphrase about it: ‘9/11 changed everything.’ Maybe not everything, but the days of hopping in a cab to LGA and buying a standby ticket, with cash no less, for the next flight out are long gone. Did we even need to show ID back then?
So when we read this week that Hollywood legend Raquel Welch had passed away, we were reminded of how her character in ‘One Million Years B.C.‘ transcended that goofy movie and became an icon of strength and beauty that still resonates. Her look in the movie’s lobby card is incomparable and has often been imitated but never surpassed. As it happened, when the one year anniversary of 9/11 approached a still wary New York City, we teamed up with a pair of strong and beautiful women to honor Raquel Welch’s indomitable spirit, as portrayed in that flick. In my mind, doing something positive and creative was the best way to honor those we’d lost. Watching the sappy wall to wall tv news coverage of the anniversary wasn’t a good option, especially since they were setting up *the exact moment the first plane hit* as though it would be something like the Times Square ball drop, only with a more solemn countdown clock.
Tia H was an up and coming performer who occasionally did modelling gigs to pay bills. Verenice M was in healthcare by then but her background was in design and fashion. For my part, I was still finding my way both technically and creatively as a photographer. It all came together when we realized that Raquel’s look in the movie’s iconic poster spoke to each one of us. Tia channeled Raquel Welch’s fierce cave woman persona to a tee, and Verenice took the concept of Raquel’s outfit and ran with it. It turned out that we had the beach to ourselves when we got there that day.
The wind was whipping sand so hard that it burned our skin. We made a makeshift lean-to with a blanket and sheltered underneath it, noshing on treats from Zabars while we set up our shots. 2002 was still film days for some of us and one of the first things you learned was don’t bring your rig to the beach. Sand and salt water are two of the worst things for a camera and you’ll probably need a professional (and costly) cleaning if not a complete replacement. But, if you’re crazy enough to do it, at least don’t open it up because any sand that gets inside will ruin your film along with your camera, digging scratches into the emulsion from first frame to last for all eternity. But in those days, if you didn’t get the shot in 36 tries you had to start a new roll which meant opening it up, and that’s what happened. Somewhat miraculously, the film wasn’t scratched and the rig even survived to shoot another day.
After we finished making our Raquel Welch tribute shots, we moved closer to the dunes for some ad libbed shots with Tia. Then, as we wrapped up, a deer came by and joined us, as if silently giving us an anniversary blessing of serenity.
So to honor the late, great Raquel Welch, here are the pictures she inspired us to make that day a million years ago, Before Covid.
