Honestly, I’m meant for one-on-one, as long as the conversation isn’t centered around me. It’s especially easy when there is a particular focal point for discussion and even more so when I have something worthy of saying. In this case, I have lots. Soon I’ve slid into the role of art critic, my tone brusque and honest with Salima and then Arty and then Karen and on down the line.
“These aren’t stories, they’re headshots,” I say, clicking through one student’s series of takes. “I feel as though I’m a casting agent. All shots looking directly at the camera, their smile fake and plastered on.”
“It’s not my fault Sara doesn’t know how to pose.”
I’m grateful I’ve pulled him away so that Sara doesn’t hear Charlie’s complaint. It’s not really about her anyway. It’s about him and he’s being defensive.
I remind myself it’s hard to accept criticism, no matter how well-meaning the critic, and take a deep breath before I speak again, more gently this time. “You have to ask for what you need if you’re not getting it in the moment. It’s not the job of the subject to create the art.”
And so it goes, one student after another, and I discover that a few of them have a natural eye and that others are bloody awful and that most are wobbly as toddlers, still trying to adapt to the medium, but all of them are willing to learn. I see when my notes resonate, and I pivot when they don’t, and each of them is quick to adjust when I watch them take a few more pics after our chat.
But now there’s only one group left—three students, one of them the one I’ve been avoiding, and as much as I didn’t want him to be first, I equally don’t want to leave him for last.
I watch the three shuffle and work together, one sitting for the other two who dance around each other with their cameras. They’ve had more time to get shots in, and there will be a lot for me to look through, so I shouldn’t delay.
Gathering myself, I call him out. “Hendrix.”
He takes a second to respond, tearing himself from his hyper-focus in stages. First, he lowers his camera. Then he takes a step back. Finally, he pulls his head from Marie and looks at me. “I’m up?”
“You’re up,” I confirm, surprised my voice sounds as giddy as it does. Surprised that it’s genuine enthusiasm.
Because I’m eager to see his work, of course. No other reason.
But when he’s standing next to me, hovering over my shoulder as I flip through the pictures on his Sony A7R IV, a camera too new and too specific to portrait work to be his usual camera, I find it rather difficult to really see anything at all. My sight is overwhelmed by my other senses—the musky scent of man, the steady sound of his breaths, the heat radiating from his body that’s oh, so close in proximity.
I’ve passed by at least a dozen shots without seeing them before I manage to force myself to blink and focus.
And now I’ve something new to distract me, because I’ve gone so far back that I’ve missed all the photos he took of Marie, a cheery gray-haired plump woman that one can’t help but adore, and am now seeing the shots he took of Kaila. Frame after frame she fills the digital screen, and, really, she’s flawless. Her skin, her coloring. The stupid little quirk of her lips.
Has he kissed those lips? Has he parted them with his tongue? Has he explored her fully with his own mouth?
I can’t know from what I’m looking at, and it hurts to wonder, but it hurts even more to hope that he hasn’t so I lean into the pain and accept that he probably has. And why wouldn’t her lips quirk up at the attention of her lover? Why wouldn’t she look radiant in his presence?
Except that’s not her, I realize when I study further. That’s the photographer making her glow. That’s Hendrix’s ability to capture the light.
Once I see his talent, I’m able to see past the subject. I knew he was good before, of course. I’ve pored over many of his nature shoots online late at night since our tryst in the autumn, enough to understand his style, and I’m sure I could correctly identify his work out of dozens of others.
I see that style here in the framing and the angles and the concept. But