Read Online Everyone is Watching by Megan Bradbury - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Megan Bradbury
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pair of leather pants hanging on the wall with a baguette protruding at the crotch.
The first time Sam meets Patti, she is barely dressed. Her hair a mess, she speaks in sweet profanities.
The first thing Sam buys Robert is a camera. The second is an apartment far away from Patti.
Sam tells Robert to take more photographs. They go away together to Fire Island, to European cities. Robert takes photographs of Sam as he used to take photographs of other
people. Sam doesn’t mind – it is the
way
Robert takes the photographs.
Sam becomes the subject of art. In Robert’s photographs, Sam is dressed or not dressed at all. Sam in the bath, pulling faces in repose, a man preparing himself for the
day; at the beach, in a dark room, dressed in nothing but a pair of white underpants. There are the couple shots – artist and patron – Sam squatting in the corner of a white room and
Robert standing over him, one arm over his head, Robert, the skinny kid in loose denim jeans; the wedding picture, Sam in front of Robert though it is always Robert’s face you’re drawn
towards; images spread across the pages of a photo album, four eight-panel pages showing a cock bound and trussed in black leather cord – Sam’s or Robert’s, it’s not
entirely clear – cord tied between the buttocks, twisted and fastened to the wrists, the front view, back view, side view.
Before Robert, Sam didn’t consider photographs to be works of art. They were more like historical documentation or reportage to him. It is Robert Mapplethorpe who changes
his mind. Sam sees Edward Steichen’s
Flatiron Building
like the prow of a ship emerging through the mist, the dagger-sharp blackness of the tree branch cutting through the
rain-drenched air.
It looks just like a painting, he says. Not like a photograph at all.
And there is that feeling again: the turning of his stomach.
Sam Wagstaff buys the photographs in auction houses and in second-hand stores. A long line of people form quickly behind him. The crowd picks up the pictures that Sam has been
looking at. They want to see what Sam has seen. Sam and Robert carry the photographs back to Sam’s apartment in plastic bags and brown-paper bags. Patti comes later to organize the pictures.
She lays the photographs out on the floor and orders them, catalogues them, figures out where they should go.
Robert and Sam enjoy the thrill of the chase. But once they possess the item, it loses its meaning.
For Sam, the subject of the photograph is not important. It could be of anything – medical photographs from the turn of the century, industrial photographs from the
1930s, anonymous photographs from any time at all. What Sam does is bring them all together so that a person can look at one and then another in one view. In their mind there will form a sequence,
something of Sam’s imagination displayed in a line.
At an exhibition of his own photography collection, Sam reads the words from the exhibition catalogue:
This exhibition is about pleasure, the pleasure of looking and the
pleasure of seeing, like watching people dancing through an open window. They seem a little mad at first, until you realize they hear the song that you are watching.
Sam’s favourite photograph in the exhibition is Thomas Eakins’
Male Nudes: Students at a Swimming Hole, 1883
. The picture shows a group of naked young men. Two are swimming
in a lake, one is sitting on the bank, two are gazing into the water, two are getting ready to jump. One is cocked and ready, balanced on the edge of a rock, about to dive. Sam feels as though he
comes to the scene by accident, strolling through a wood, the last days of summer, when the season has cooled, when the air has changed, when the day seems shorter than it should. The diver holds
his position. His friends look on, frozen in time. A breeze blows in, not one of them moves. Water laps their skin. A beetle crawls across the diver’s toe. The sun shimmers on the water,
catches
The first time Sam meets Patti, she is barely dressed. Her hair a mess, she speaks in sweet profanities.
The first thing Sam buys Robert is a camera. The second is an apartment far away from Patti.
Sam tells Robert to take more photographs. They go away together to Fire Island, to European cities. Robert takes photographs of Sam as he used to take photographs of other
people. Sam doesn’t mind – it is the
way
Robert takes the photographs.
Sam becomes the subject of art. In Robert’s photographs, Sam is dressed or not dressed at all. Sam in the bath, pulling faces in repose, a man preparing himself for the
day; at the beach, in a dark room, dressed in nothing but a pair of white underpants. There are the couple shots – artist and patron – Sam squatting in the corner of a white room and
Robert standing over him, one arm over his head, Robert, the skinny kid in loose denim jeans; the wedding picture, Sam in front of Robert though it is always Robert’s face you’re drawn
towards; images spread across the pages of a photo album, four eight-panel pages showing a cock bound and trussed in black leather cord – Sam’s or Robert’s, it’s not
entirely clear – cord tied between the buttocks, twisted and fastened to the wrists, the front view, back view, side view.
Before Robert, Sam didn’t consider photographs to be works of art. They were more like historical documentation or reportage to him. It is Robert Mapplethorpe who changes
his mind. Sam sees Edward Steichen’s
Flatiron Building
like the prow of a ship emerging through the mist, the dagger-sharp blackness of the tree branch cutting through the
rain-drenched air.
It looks just like a painting, he says. Not like a photograph at all.
And there is that feeling again: the turning of his stomach.
Sam Wagstaff buys the photographs in auction houses and in second-hand stores. A long line of people form quickly behind him. The crowd picks up the pictures that Sam has been
looking at. They want to see what Sam has seen. Sam and Robert carry the photographs back to Sam’s apartment in plastic bags and brown-paper bags. Patti comes later to organize the pictures.
She lays the photographs out on the floor and orders them, catalogues them, figures out where they should go.
Robert and Sam enjoy the thrill of the chase. But once they possess the item, it loses its meaning.
For Sam, the subject of the photograph is not important. It could be of anything – medical photographs from the turn of the century, industrial photographs from the
1930s, anonymous photographs from any time at all. What Sam does is bring them all together so that a person can look at one and then another in one view. In their mind there will form a sequence,
something of Sam’s imagination displayed in a line.
At an exhibition of his own photography collection, Sam reads the words from the exhibition catalogue:
This exhibition is about pleasure, the pleasure of looking and the
pleasure of seeing, like watching people dancing through an open window. They seem a little mad at first, until you realize they hear the song that you are watching.
Sam’s favourite photograph in the exhibition is Thomas Eakins’
Male Nudes: Students at a Swimming Hole, 1883
. The picture shows a group of naked young men. Two are swimming
in a lake, one is sitting on the bank, two are gazing into the water, two are getting ready to jump. One is cocked and ready, balanced on the edge of a rock, about to dive. Sam feels as though he
comes to the scene by accident, strolling through a wood, the last days of summer, when the season has cooled, when the air has changed, when the day seems shorter than it should. The diver holds
his position. His friends look on, frozen in time. A breeze blows in, not one of them moves. Water laps their skin. A beetle crawls across the diver’s toe. The sun shimmers on the water,
catches
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