A Division of the Light

by Christopher Burns

  Gregory explains to Alice that he will effectively be shooting digital black-and-white with the equivalent of a low ASA and a shallow depth of field. At first he has her standing with arms folded, and then he asks her to pose with one hand on the back of the chair, and then both. He puts a few impersonal questions to her that she barely answers. After a few minutes he motions her to sit.

  Gregory obtains both aesthetic and intellectual satisfaction from photography. He finds pleasure not only in technical calculations and in the arrangement of lighting, but also in the actual handling of a camera, in its shape and weight, in the changing of lenses and the twist of the focus ring, in the responsiveness of the shutter release. He enjoys the way the camera body seats itself on a tripod, the coded display on its screen, the unison of flash and shutter, and he enjoys the power of having his models pose exactly how he wishes them to pose.

  At first Alice does as she is told. She stands and turns and sits at the center of the cluttered studio, her black blouse fastened primly at the cuffs and opened at the throat by only one button. She stares back into the curvature of the lens, into its deep arc of color like spilled petrol, and all it can detect is her bland impenetrable surface. It cannot find a hidden aspect of the self. At this point she is no different from thousands of others who have sat in front of a photographer.

  Gregory recognizes what is going wrong. Alice is wary about answering the questions that he usually puts to his sitters. For many years he has followed a procedure that loosens up his subjects and then triggers an emotion, no matter how fleeting. This reaction he is able to catch on the instant. His technique is one of kindly but persistent interrogation. Seduced by the unwavering attention of both photographer and camera, the subject talks openly, as if to a confessor. Gregory has listened so often to intimate admissions that they seldom surprise him. They have become part of the protocol. The act of photography opens the door on hidden rooms of emotion and belief.

  Alice will have none of this. Instead of eagerness she exhibits caution. Perhaps her stubbornness contains an element of mistrust. With other models, Gregory has been confident enough to move rapidly to the most personal kind of inquiry, for it is in the disclosure of the most private experiences that the features of sitters come alive. He knows that men and women habitually present a face that attempts to disguise feelings that are of particular interest—melancholia, longing, obsession, arousal and mystery.

  With Alice, it becomes obvious that she is deliberately evading familiarity. She does not even answer questions that she has answered freely in the past.

  Gregory is frustrated. He realizes that he is shooting too many unusable frames and forces himself to step back and pause.

  What progress has he made? In each succeeding shot there is nothing extra; there is only repetition. He connects the camera to a monitor so that he can use a larger screen to show Alice some of what has been taken. She shrugs and says nothing. He cannot tell if she is puzzled or uninterested.

  Gregory stands with his hand on his chin and studies his subject. Her very silence is a challenge. He admits to himself that his fascination with Alice has to do with his uncertainty about her character. There is something about Alice Fell that eludes him, and it eludes his camera as well.

  When he is able to look back on the beginning of the session, Gregory will realize that this moment of contemplation allowed him to think of a way forward. There are books on his shelves that contain hundreds of classic images, some of which he could copy. Alice’s blouse would show as the deepest black on any print. It took him only a few seconds to think of Man Ray’s 1930 study of Lee Miller. What he had to do now was demonstrate how that composition worked.

  He showed the picture to Alice and explained that he intended to make a variation on the original. It would be a kind of homage, recognized as such amongst aficionados. Alice should keep her top button unfastened; the inverted triangle of bare skin would provide an interesting geometric shape. She should turn her head to the left and raise her left hand, fingers extended, almost to the collarbone. Light would appear to suffuse across the right-hand side of her face and a sharp line of brilliance would run from her left eyebrow, down the side of her neck, and touch her fingers as they rested against the black blouse. As he told her this, Gregory could smell her hair, the perfume she had sprayed on her skin, a lotion she had rubbed on her hands.

  Alice was unconvinced, but took up the posture. “I have no idea who that woman is,” she said.

  Although he could not decide whether Alice expected him to follow up her admission, Gregory saw that he had been given an opportunity. He began to shoot at a steady pace, and as he worked he talked quickly, timing his phrases to fall between each release of the shutter. What he could not remember, he invented.

  Lee Miller, he told her, was an independent woman, a great beauty who sought pleasure in several affairs, a model for Edward Steichen as well as Man Ray, a socialite and photographer who became famous for her unflinching studies of the collapse of the Third Reich. These basic facts Gregory embroidered, importing fictionalized tales of other photographers, other subjects. He even credited Miller with work that he knew for a fact was that of both Gerda Taro and George Rodger.

  He did not have to look at the screen to know that Alice remained awkward rather than confident, stiff rather than glamorous. Nevertheless there was a hint of relaxation, as if hearing his stories had aroused her interest; as if, after a time, she could even become fascinated.

  And now Gregory produced an even older photograph. It was from 1864—Julia Margaret Cameron’s portrait of a sixteen-year-old Ellen Terry. The model is bare-shouldered, head inclined, her eyes downcast toward the lower left corner of the frame. Natural light spills in from the right to illuminate her collarbone, neck, left cheek and the underside of her jaw. She clasps a necklace with her right hand.

  As Alice studied the image, Gregory asked about its constituents. Here was a portrait of a pretty girl, but what gave it that tactile quality, that distinctive energy?

  Alice waited for a second before replying.

  “The necklace?”

  “We’ll come back to that.”

  “The shoulders?”

  At last Gregory believed that he was making progress.

  “Right,” he agreed, “the shoulders. You can see how their angle and their nakedness control the spatial dynamic. By posing her model like that, Margaret Cameron allows us to see into the thoughts of a young girl almost 150 years ago. Look at the expression on that face. The model recognizes her own attractiveness. She knows she has a future. Were it not for the bare shoulders, that muted eroticism would be lost.”

  Alice stared at the photograph as if she were contemplating her own past.

  Gregory waited for several seconds before asking the next question.

  “What have you got on under that top?”

  “You want me to have bare shoulders?”

  “The Margaret Cameron shows how it would work.”

  The response was swift enough to make him realize that she had anticipated his suggestion. For a few seconds she might even have considered it.

  “It wouldn’t work,” Alice said. “I’m wearing a black bra. And I’m not taking that off.”

  “You needn’t do anything that you don’t want. There’s no pressure here. I’m not as manipulative as you suspect. But you should understand that I’ve photographed so many women, and a lot of them naked, that I’m used to it.”

  “You’re indifferent to nakedness?”

  “I’m professional about it. But you and I aren’t talking about nudity, are we? We’re talking about bare shoulders and that’s all. Pity you’re not wearing a necklace. It would have had to be substantial. And with rounded forms.”

  “I’m wearing a crucifix. A tiny one.”

  “It wouldn’t work so well. Would you object to taking it off? Are you religious?”

  “No. Not conventionally.”

  “Then why wear it?”


  “Does there have to be a reason for everything?”

  “Not at all. There’s nothing wrong with people doing things just because they like it. But there’s certainly a reason why I think you should take off that crucifix and be photographed in the way that Ellen Terry was photographed. You don’t have any tattoos on your shoulders, do you?”

  “I don’t have any tattoos anywhere.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “I don’t have a necklace either.”

  “That’s easily arranged.”

  “What—you have a box of props?”

  “I have lots of things. I can get a necklace. I can get one now.”

  “But there will be shiny black straps over my shoulders.”

  Gregory nodded. He and Alice stared at each other for a moment. He was not sure what was passing between them. He did not think that Alice knew, either.

  “I’ll bring that necklace,” he said quietly.

  Gregory descended the flights of stairs too quickly. Their hollowness echoed around his footsteps. And then the handle of the office door unaccountably slipped from his grasp with a clatter like a sprung trap, and he had to turn it on a second attempt.

  Cassie looked up at him from the desk. “Is there a fire?” she asked drily.

  “I’d like to borrow that necklace. Please.”

  Cassie raised her fingers to touch the lower beads. They were imitation ivory and had been strung so that the largest hung several inches beneath the base of her neck. Her fingers moved across the surfaces as if testing for smoothness.

  “They’re Mother’s,” she reminded him.

  “I haven’t forgotten.”

  A few seconds passed. Gregory wondered why his daughter did not speak.

  “And you don’t have a problem about using them?” Cassie asked at last.

  “No. They improve the composition. That’s the only reason I’m asking.”

  She stared at him, fingers still on the beads.

  “Other than that, it means nothing,” Gregory insisted.

  For a moment it seemed as if Cassie would refuse.

  “If you’re comfortable with this,” she said at last, putting her hands to the back of her neck. Her disapproval was quietly evident.

  Again Gregory tried to justify himself. “All I’m doing is trying to take the best pictures that I can.”

  “They won’t even suit her. She hasn’t got the right shape of face.”

  Cassie unclipped the beads and held them out as if she were relinquishing a prize. As they swayed they made a noise like tentative friction.

  “You’ve never asked to borrow them before. Never.”

  Gregory hesitated. Perhaps Cassie was right. Perhaps the necklace was still so closely associated with his wife that it would be wrong to place them around the neck of Alice Fell. And yet he believed that inanimate objects had no intrinsic emotional value. Only superstitious people imagined them to be somehow imbued with the spirit of others. Objects were things; they had form in space and duration in time, and that was all.

  He took the beads from Cassie’s hand. As he did he felt a mild tingle of static electricity.

  “I’ll bring them straight back,” he promised.

  As he climbed back up the stairs he remembered his wife unfastening the same necklace as she sat in front of her dressingtable mirrors. Taking off his clothes on the far side of the bed, Gregory had glanced across and something inside him had lurched. Ruth’s pale back and raised arms, and her reflection divided in a vertical line by two of the mirrors, had combined by chance into an ideal composition.

  Gregory had never photographed his wife naked; she had not wished him to. Only after Ruth died had he begun to work on extensive studies of the female form. But on that day, as she calmly and systematically took off her clothes, he had felt a need, an ache, to record the specifics of her body while he could. He had even suggested it. But Ruth had laughed and insisted she was no model; besides, she would be embarrassed.

  One year later, as the disease took hold, she had not at first complained when he obsessively photographed her decline. Seemingly she had understood it was his way of coping with her approaching death. Only in its later stages had both his wife and daughter seen Gregory’s professionalism as exploitative and callous. Sometimes he thought that Cassie had never really forgiven him for those last few weeks.

  Gregory neared the top of the stairs. He paused at the entrance to the studio, overtaken by a sudden boyish fantasy of seeing Alice standing naked. But when he entered he found her seated on the chair and dressed just as she had been when he had left. For a moment it seemed that borrowing the necklace had been a waste of energy. Nevertheless he held it out in an unconscious repeat of Cassie’s gesture.

  Alice did not move. “This isn’t a prop out of a box,” she said. “When I arrived here your daughter was wearing it. Doesn’t she mind?”

  “She understands.”

  “It is your daughter’s, isn’t it?”

  “Of course.”

  Alice took the string and held it between her hands. “I haven’t said I’ll do this.”

  He said nothing. Quite suddenly Alice turned her back.

  Gregory crossed the room to adjust one of the lights. He had the sensation of a door being opened somewhere out of sight. He paused behind the tripod and put his fingers around the focus ring. His mouth was dry.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  Methodically, as if she had reached an unpleasant decision and wanted no further delay, Alice began to take off her blouse. Watching from behind, Gregory noted the poise of the upturned wrists as she unbuttoned her cuffs, the flexing of the shoulders and extension of the arms as she slipped them out of the black sleeves. The material whispered faintly, like discarded clothing falling from a bed.

  A thin gold chain glinted at the back of Alice’s neck and the sheer straps of a black bra clasped her like a harness. Angled light shaded the plunge of her spine; Gregory could see the shapes of her vertebrae beneath the pale unblemished skin.

  She sat with the blouse in her hands as though uncertain where to place it. Gregory walked to her side and she passed it to him without a word. The material was warm in his fingers. He knew that if he lifted it to his face he would be able to smell her body.

  “I’ll put the cross over there,” he said.

  She lifted her arms to unhook the clasp and he saw that she had not recently shaved beneath them.

  The crucifix was light, almost insubstantial. Gregory placed it on the shelf and then hung the blouse on a hanger with a metal hook that clicked with a noise like a turned key when he placed it on the hatstand. The beads slid against Alice’s skin as she fastened the necklace. As soon as it was secure she turned back to the lens with her arms folded protectively across her breasts as if they were naked. He could see the edging of the bra cups beneath her hands.

  “What would Thomas say if he saw me posing like this?”

  “If I were him, I’d feel proud.”

  “And the people I work with?”

  “Are they likely to? Do you care?”

  “No. But maybe I should.”

  Gregory gave the tolerant, experienced smile he had perfected over the years.

  “You can’t keep both your hands there,” he said. “I want one of them to be fingering the beads. Don’t worry, I’m framing your head and shoulders, and nothing else.”

  “I know.”

  There was a moment’s silence before Alice spoke again in a different register. This time she was gently interrogative, as if she were imitating Gregory’s own technique.

  “But do you really want just to copy an old photo? I don’t want to be a copy of anything. Wouldn’t it be better to do something different?”

  He looked more closely at Alice. She dared him to read her face, but he was not sure that he could. In expression and stance and word, she lived by a vocabulary that Gregory could only partly understand.

  “I’m trying to get what I promis
ed I’d get,” he told her. “Up until now, I haven’t been able to. But I’m not going to give up.”

  “If this is proving a lot more difficult than you expected, then I take that as a compliment.”

  Gregory continued to stare. To look away would be to fail. Silence lay between them like an invisible history.

  Alice’s mouth moved almost imperceptibly; he was sure that for less than a second her lips parted before they closed again. A light in her eyes made him believe that she was expecting some form of challenge, perhaps even a confrontation. Maybe she was readying herself to insult or repulse him.

  “Just touch the beads with the tips of your fingers,” he instructed.

  Alice raised her left hand. The bra cups were trimmed with black lace and he could see the plump milky curve of her breasts above them. The necklace contrasted too severely with the skin and the black straps heightened the pictorial discord. He had made a miscalculation.

  “No—the right hand.”

  Alice did as she was told and let her left arm fall by her side with the fingers spread. The beads still looked bulky, too round, too much like ivory. Gregory considered them from where he stood beside the tripod. A tiny wry smile showed momentarily on Alice’s face. He wondered if his doubt was apparent.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “Try to look through the lens, rather than at it.”

  She did not imitate the Margaret Cameron by turning to one side and looking down, and Gregory did not ask her to. Instead she stared directly into the lens without moving and without blinking.

  The camera was neither instrument nor barrier but a conduit to whomever would study her image. At last Alice was making an imaginative link with observers whom she would never see and never know. Excitement touched her and the air in the room grew warmer. Gregory began to believe that the sitting was successful. He was on the way to getting what was needed.

  After more than a dozen shots he paused with his finger resting alongside the shutter release.