To an artist, there’s beauty in a horse face

I hacked my way through Howard Street, clogged with construction workers and Oracle convention preparations on Thursday, Oct. 18, to see photographer

Mary McCartney’s show at the Berggruen Gallery. The exhibition (on until Nov. 21) is called “The White Horse,” and it focuses on images of Alejandro, a white Andalusian stallion acquired by the photographer several years ago. He’s one of about 10 horses on the family farm in Sussex, England.

The photos are romantic, idyllic, many shot at night, some close up and others at a distance. It was the close-ups that particularly compelled me. Last week, you’ll remember, was the week in which the president of the United States had referred to Stormy Daniels as “Horseface.” I was sure the photographer wouldn’t find that term pejorative, and I was going to ask her about those aesthetics.

Her sweatshirt had the word “sweatshirt” printed on the front. Obviously, she had a sense of irony. But when I introduced the subject, she said she’d sworn off following news about the president, and didn’t know anything about his having dubbed an alleged former squeeze/payee a horseface.

I asked her about the beauty in a horse face: “I went from taking a lot of pictures of people, embedding myself in people’s homes, taking pictures of their lives behind the scenes,” she said. “Connecting with them and gaining their trust had a collaborative element.”

Her relationship with Alejandro had similar elements. Acquiring the horse, she said, “really took me back to my childhood,” riding him and watching his mane, for example, fly around his head. “I felt connected to him.”

But, I was thinking, what about Trump? McCartney refused to let headlines blur her focus. “I felt connected to him,” she said of Alejandro. “I love riding. It’s about a connection with another living being.” Feeling the horse move under her as she rode, “There was a natural rhythm. This is not a machine. I started observing more closely.”

Alejandro had a “nobility and strength,” she said, and had given her a sort of permission. “You know he’s happy to have me ride him. You can tell there’s respect between the two of us.”

I was doubting this would describe the relationship between Daniels and her lover, but the tone of McCartney’s replies indicated she wasn’t going to say anything about that. It was clear, however, that to the animal-loving photographer, Alejandro’s horse face is not a horseface.

P.S.: The photographer is the daughter of the late photographer Linda Eastman

McCartney and Paul McCartney. I didn’t ask her about that.

At the just-concluded Mill Valley Film Festival, one afternoon program featured a showing of short films by, and conversation between, filmmakers Allie

Light and Eleanor Coppola. Both were accomplished documentarians who have become directors of dramatic films.

Light’s “Any Wednesday” is about the relationship between an elderly woman with dementia and a homeless vet suffering from PTSD. Coppola’s “Two for Dinner” is about a couple who participate in a video date night.

What did the female directors have in common? Graziella Danieli, who attended the session, says both proclaimed themselves astonished when actors would do what they asked them to do.

At least half the sequins in town, as well as three-quarters of the beads, were worn by the 300 or so guests who attended the 90th birthday celebration of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel on Thursday.

The Klipptones, who performed “Honeysuckle Rose” (1929) and other music of the era, used iPads instead of sheet music. But otherwise, guests, staff members and a few performers/models hired for the occasion had put on authentic-looking glitz to sashay to the bar, past tables laden with food.

Sadly, the hotel’s Prohibition Room — described by Carl Nolte in a piece about the hotel’s history — was not available. It’s tucked away between the lobby and mezzanine, over an elevator shaft, and the elevator’s being renovated, explained head concierge Leif Abram. Abram has been on the job for about six years, he said. He’d attended his high school prom in the hotel.

Greeting all guests, of course, was doorman Tom Sweeney, who has been on the job for 42 years and 46 Beefeater uniforms. Inside the hotel, an homage to the Jazz Age; outside, a nod to British pomp and ceremony. This is 2018; we celebrate fusion.