Her service was like performance art. You know the type - where the artist creates an experience that is very tactile and even enhanced by everyone's participation. The work itself is only part of the creator's pre-visualization. Its ultimate display and the audience reaction to it actually completes the effort. Ultimately, we are all engaged in the final production which is as much a moment in time as it is a timeless memento.

How oddly ironic. Mary, haven't we joked about this? After all, why did I create Keylight in the first place? It was a discussion we had more than once. I was just worn out by so much self-gratification in photography. Art without communication. Photographers creating images to substantiate their technique, but without true honesty. Permanent or impermanent, it hardly matters if it delivers no message and perpetuates no change. All those artists who feel compelled to create an experience and not one whose experience is truly compelling. But here is Mary and at this very moment I am more engaged in her impermanence than I have ever been. Fulfilling her own vision. The finalization of her decade-long piece. Mary's personal peace.

Sitting there, I rationalize it all in my head. She prepared us, we all knew it was coming. But now, I just can't reconcile her latest maneuver. I want to scream out loud, "Mary, what were you thinking? This changes everything! Don't you know? You were the energizer bunny and you even encouraged us to expect it from you! Mary! How could you be there now?

A painter's palette swishes across the room, darks mixed with instances of crimson and yellow. I had already seen them sitting as a group in the reception hall. Animated, lively. I wanted to stop at their table to ask them what they know about Mary's current existence. Where is she? Is she with us in this room today? Is she gone? They understand everything. They all have some absolute connection; a closeness to Nirvana that I'm never likely to enjoy. They are much better than I am. I don't have the nerve to approach.

The room is filling up so quickly. I'm not surprised. Everyone loved Mary. It's going to be huge. Where is Julianne? I can't hold on to this seat much longer. She must have grabbed a place on the other side. I pick up my purse to give up the chair. Swoosh! A very large Buddhist monk seizes the day.

"Oh Mary, you're just too funny, even now", I think to myself. But how can I speak with him? How can I begin to ask? And if I dismiss this gift you've sent my way, am I abandoning you? Today, of all days? I am tormented. He isn't. He knows where you are and I'm just torn apart. I'm not ready to believe you've gone to a better place. I know how you suffered, and if anyone deserves the repose it's you, but Mary, I just hate that you died.

Her only brother is speaking. I don't care to look up. A tiny sniffle and an oversized arm captures my attention. I peek left. My Buddhist is crying. Secretly, I am relieved.

I first met Mary in 1979, when we were both working at B.G.M., a local photo lab, making custom colour prints. I was a student of Photography at Ryerson, and was working part-time. I was really excited to have landed an actual job in "the biz". Mary had been printing for longer than I had, and she was working there full time. but I'm not about to mince words. She was really good at it and I was hapless. In fact, let's just put this all in perspective. On any given day, Mary could produce between 60 and 70 hand-made prints from negatives. I could deliver about 7 - but only as long as the supervisors were feeling particularly amiable, or just plain anxious to get home and willing to pass absolutely anything through.

At B.G.M., they weighed the waste that came out of each darkroom once a month to keep control over production. Suffice to say, I regularly engineered more losses for the company than profits. My tub was forever overflowing. I don't think Mary's ever saw more than a thin layer of paper at the bottom. More than that, Mary was producing larger prints than I was, and her enlarger was huge. I wondered how they could even assign her to that darkroom! She was just so tiny. The effort that went into printing there must have been enormous. I think she had to jump to raise the enlarger to the top. So looking back, I'm ready to believe it was more of an exercise in aerobics than art. Mary was warm and funny. She wasn't judgmental, and never gave my obese waste bin a sideways glance. Mary didn't require supervisors - she inspected her own work. And while Mary was standing outside, colour-balancing her prints, it seemed that mine always passed through more easily. She just had that aura about her. It put everyone in a good mood. I adored her instantly, and miraculously enough, kept my job at B.G.M. for two years. By the time I left, I had learned how to make a decent colour print, thanks in large part to Mary.

Around the corner from Ryerson, there used to be a photo shop called "Dave's Darkroom & Camera". Darkroom Dave, as he was known to us all, was something of a prophet. Each purchase came packaged with additional enlightenment; something free to take with you. The size of your acquisition probably determined how much philosophy you were going to get. I had decided I wanted to set up my own black and white darkroom. I needed an enlarger, trays, chemistry, - the works. Dave offered the best price, so I bought it all there. Once I had settled the bill and everything was organized, Dave looked at me soberly and said. "You know, you can't make it as a photographer in Canada". I wasn't immediately prepared to find a new country for my darkroom, so I went home instead.

As it turns out, Dave was right, to a point. During the next ten years, I worked as a commercial photographer specializing in architecture and interior design. There were some fabulous times, but about 1990, the real estate market did a belly-flop. Contractors, architects and designers were filing for bankruptcy everywhere. Reputable publishers were accepting photographs from sources other than their creator, and using them without attribution and obviously without payment. I didn't have a rolodex. My clients and suppliers' cards were contained within a four inch-thick binder of 8.5 x 11" sheets. I had hundreds of them. By early 1993, only two names were still active. Yes, two individual cards. All of the others had either closed down or moved on to other companies. Only one or two people had died. Everyone else had failed. Now, it really wouldn't make any difference at all if you could simply change your specialty once you hit a snag like that but, in photography it doesn't seem to work that way. You are what you always have been and professionally, it's too compartmentalized. Art and commerce are bipolar. Travel down one road or another, but never in tandem. Art and commerce each have multiple personalities - neither one of which is capable of recognizing itself, or even the other's existence.

The real struggle in being a photographic artist in Canada is that you end up relinquishing all hope for financial success. It simply isn't true that the work is so difficult to sell. In fact, photography is enjoying better validation than it ever has in the past. Reality is, the division between art and commerce in photography is a limitation conceived by the collective itself - photographers who can't or won't market themselves as free agents, and will not, under any circumstances, make something happen independently. If it costs money to produce a project, there is only one option which is to apply for funding. If the funding doesn't come, however, the project won't evolve. Funding bodies are insular and restrictive, being largely made up of artists who never spent any of their own money to realize their personal projects, but who are perpetually interested in supporting others they recognized or supported in the first place. So, whenever you see a photographer working on a personal project, you can be pretty certain of two things: They are already recognized, and they received a grant.

I heard through the grapevine that Mary lost another breast. I found that impossible to believe. I had just seen her at Image Works making large prints from her trip to Italy. She was working on her own project. It seemed she was putting an exhibit together. As always, the work was beautiful. It had to be a misdiagnosis. What kind of crazy story was that? But then, I never saw Mary for a long time, although I occasionally caught news. The news was never great. She was still struggling through chemo and everything that goes along with cancer, but she did manage to get through it. Later, I heard that Mary's disease had spread, and that it was very bad, and once again, she labored through it.

By 2000, my own life had taken a new turn. I was now involved in graphic communications and the Internet. I was really enjoying it and had registered my own domain, www.keylight.org - a website to celebrate photography for the event it creates; a venue to explore photographers whose work actually matters. That year, a new exhibition of Mary's work was hanging at The Royal Ontario Museum, with proceeds going to benefit Wellspring, a breast cancer support group in Toronto. Of course, I expected the show to be elegant and knew it would be well executed - it was Mary Pocock. But this was more, far more. Mary's newest work shared her spiritual journey through a series of double exposures and mystical references. It was all so cohesive and illuminating. I was already familiar with some individual pieces, but together, in this instance, it was overwhelming.

For me, it was like a movie that sticks with you for weeks on end. I relived it over and over. I kept thinking about fish living in trees and watery pyramids and sheep and angels. Always about angels. More than anything, I wanted to feature Mary on my site. This had to be as perfect as any feature could be. I was reluctant to call. In the back of my head, I worried she really wasn't strong enough to go through all her images with me and actually, I didn't know how much longer she could survive. Most of all, I wasn't sure she'd be very interested in employing her energy that way.

Her exact words were "Hmmmm. Ellen, I think we should make this happen!" She suggested we meet for coffee at Indigo. Mary brought a stack of prints, slides and drawings. Many of the photographs had been taken on trips throughout Europe. She told me she wanted to create some new pieces, when she was no longer committed to medical regimens and also felt well enough. Without hesitation, I asked her if she thought she could acquire more funding. I wasn't being glib.

Mary explained she had never been subsidized. Her journey was personal and cathartic, and that was how she was approaching the work. I was astonished. In that moment, she alone changed my personal understanding of photography and art. Sure, photography depicts reality. Pick any theme - journalism, life moments, portraiture... Now think conceptual - any situation which never actually occurred but which an artist tries realize in print. It's all articulation and forever intended to communicate a message. Mary's wasn't being conceived from that determination. She was developing her art to search inward, and by exquisite harmony was communicating outward. Until that day, it simply never occurred to me that a piece of art can become, and not be created.

I was especially taken with Bone Scan. It was my personal favorite. We conceived of a slide show, River Dialogue, and started putting it together. Mary would e-mail with something like,

"I just got back from Baltimore, I have three appointments on Wednesday - two in the morning at Princess Margaret - 10 and 11. How 'bout we meet in between? I have to be at Sunnybrook for 3."

I took Mary up on her offer to meet at Princess Margaret, but had no idea that I was about to embark on a very new journey myself - Outside the perimeter of Club C.