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Authors: Elizabeth Black
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7
HAVE YOU EVER DISCOVERED YOURSELF in someone else’s snapshot? Felt that small shock of surprise? You might have forgotten that the photo was ever taken. But there you are—your face unbecomingly flushed, your arm draped around the neck of a man who smiles foolishly at your breasts. Closer inspection reveals that your hem is hanging.
Some people would say that the photo shows the truth. That the camera doesn’t lie. But it does—a fact I recognized from the time I looked through the viewfinder of the Brownie 127, clicked off a picture, and left my sister, Frankie, out of it.
It was Easter Sunday when I found the camera in a nest of green cellophane grass at the foot of a jelly palm in our back garden.
Typically Frankie and I each received a small gift to mark the holiday, often a crystallized sugar egg trimmed with colored icing. Through an opening in one end you could see a suite of ducklings or the profile of a rabbit. Frankie used to pry the hardened icing off her egg with a nail file until there was nothing left but its gritty skin. Then she’d go after whatever was inside. I wanted to keep mine intact so I tried to hide them from her in the chaos under my bed. She always found them.
We were not regular churchgoers, but I knew what heaven was, and in my mind it had something to do with that white stillness and the way it enclosed the tiny distant rabbit.
Of course the scene inside the egg never changed. I remember thinking that the camera was similar. I had never handled one before,and I did not understand at first that the images that streamed past the viewfinder were mine to choose.
That same year Eleanor had bought white straw purses for Frankie and me. They were made to look like baskets, with a hinged lid and wicker hasp. Frankie and I were outside, dressed and ready to leave for Easter Sunday dinner, when Eleanor saw me. “Not the camera, Clare,” she said. “You might lose it.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Ridiculous present for a child that age,” said my father. “Clare, take it in the house.”
It was quiet inside. I walked toward the stairs, but at the last minute, I slid around the corner into the kitchen. Standing behind the door, I opened the basket and jammed the camera in. In my hurry, I pushed the lid down too hard, and the raffia hinge broke.
The list of things I had unintentionally spoiled was already long—clothing and objects torn, stained, and broken.
I returned to the car, carrying the basket carefully in both hands, holding it closed. No one noticed anything. Not until we were seated at our table, and a waiter, thinking to be helpful, lifted it off my plate by the handle, and the purse came apart. I tensed, waiting, but my mother was oddly quiet. I wasn’t punished.
At no time was there any mention of Will. Not then, not later.
My first photos were of a chair. The seat, the back slats, from in front, from the side. I discovered that the act of photography alters the most straightforward objects, perhaps permanently. That something once observed and photographed, from a certain angle, is never the same again. I was less interested in things like flowers and sunsets that grew or altered naturally. Their eventual transformation was to be expected.
No one saw any merit in what I was doing, although it was tolerated like most childish enthusiasms. “The things she photographs,” my father said. “Look at this. What is it? Appears to be a manhole cover.”
My mother murmured something in response.
“Well,” he said, “eye of the beholder, I suppose.” From underthe porch, I listened and recognized myself for the first time. The beholder .
Eventually I moved on to more complicated subjects—tree branches, the grille of the family Buick, the pattern left by a tire tread in the sand. Then, finally, people. Faline, kneading pastry dough. Patrick, disappearing around a corner. My early shots of my mother mostly show her back—the curve of her spine, the zipper running
HAVE YOU EVER DISCOVERED YOURSELF in someone else’s snapshot? Felt that small shock of surprise? You might have forgotten that the photo was ever taken. But there you are—your face unbecomingly flushed, your arm draped around the neck of a man who smiles foolishly at your breasts. Closer inspection reveals that your hem is hanging.
Some people would say that the photo shows the truth. That the camera doesn’t lie. But it does—a fact I recognized from the time I looked through the viewfinder of the Brownie 127, clicked off a picture, and left my sister, Frankie, out of it.
It was Easter Sunday when I found the camera in a nest of green cellophane grass at the foot of a jelly palm in our back garden.
Typically Frankie and I each received a small gift to mark the holiday, often a crystallized sugar egg trimmed with colored icing. Through an opening in one end you could see a suite of ducklings or the profile of a rabbit. Frankie used to pry the hardened icing off her egg with a nail file until there was nothing left but its gritty skin. Then she’d go after whatever was inside. I wanted to keep mine intact so I tried to hide them from her in the chaos under my bed. She always found them.
We were not regular churchgoers, but I knew what heaven was, and in my mind it had something to do with that white stillness and the way it enclosed the tiny distant rabbit.
Of course the scene inside the egg never changed. I remember thinking that the camera was similar. I had never handled one before,and I did not understand at first that the images that streamed past the viewfinder were mine to choose.
That same year Eleanor had bought white straw purses for Frankie and me. They were made to look like baskets, with a hinged lid and wicker hasp. Frankie and I were outside, dressed and ready to leave for Easter Sunday dinner, when Eleanor saw me. “Not the camera, Clare,” she said. “You might lose it.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Ridiculous present for a child that age,” said my father. “Clare, take it in the house.”
It was quiet inside. I walked toward the stairs, but at the last minute, I slid around the corner into the kitchen. Standing behind the door, I opened the basket and jammed the camera in. In my hurry, I pushed the lid down too hard, and the raffia hinge broke.
The list of things I had unintentionally spoiled was already long—clothing and objects torn, stained, and broken.
I returned to the car, carrying the basket carefully in both hands, holding it closed. No one noticed anything. Not until we were seated at our table, and a waiter, thinking to be helpful, lifted it off my plate by the handle, and the purse came apart. I tensed, waiting, but my mother was oddly quiet. I wasn’t punished.
At no time was there any mention of Will. Not then, not later.
My first photos were of a chair. The seat, the back slats, from in front, from the side. I discovered that the act of photography alters the most straightforward objects, perhaps permanently. That something once observed and photographed, from a certain angle, is never the same again. I was less interested in things like flowers and sunsets that grew or altered naturally. Their eventual transformation was to be expected.
No one saw any merit in what I was doing, although it was tolerated like most childish enthusiasms. “The things she photographs,” my father said. “Look at this. What is it? Appears to be a manhole cover.”
My mother murmured something in response.
“Well,” he said, “eye of the beholder, I suppose.” From underthe porch, I listened and recognized myself for the first time. The beholder .
Eventually I moved on to more complicated subjects—tree branches, the grille of the family Buick, the pattern left by a tire tread in the sand. Then, finally, people. Faline, kneading pastry dough. Patrick, disappearing around a corner. My early shots of my mother mostly show her back—the curve of her spine, the zipper running
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