Teliost Language Services

A Photographer’s Story

Emerging from the darkroom into what had essentially become a studio apartment, Samantha suddenly realized how much time had passed. The light streaming in through the windows had dwindled and the room was so dimly lit, it was as if she were still under the safe light. Yet now thirty and years into the sacrifices required for her arts career, this had become her natural habitat, so she sighed with resignation and walked calmly to the refrigerator to pour a glass of wine. 

Twirling the glass in her hand, the intermingling aromas wafting, she wondered whether she should even have one tonight at all. Life felt bleak lately. Weaving in-between colleagues’ gallery shows, her own shoots with clients, and her cave of chemical baths, she spent her days carrying herself begrudgingly through the labor amidst what she had always imagined would be a dream.  

It was a privilege, and she always recognized that, especially ever since her checks stopped bouncing, but it had begun to feel more blasé with each passing day as her work began to appear ever more textbook. Technically proficient, yes, but nothing had felt elevated in months. The commercial work in digital was rolling along smoothly, consistent delivery, and the clients were all delighted, but when the time came to dive into her own work, the raison d’être of the whole practice, she felt a swelling sense of panic and dissociation, as if everything she had been producing for the last year were lackluster and lesser. Sometimes it felt as if it was not even her own. It felt like dying inside. Nonetheless, fueled by the memory of the original passion, she continued to push through where she had witnessed others collapse into despair and abandon their bodies and lens.  

To Samantha, a commitment to one’s art required the absurd devotion, a faith sustained no matter how dark the valleys might become—monk-like, alienating oneself from the lived world into observer, into interpreter, into art, into the eye directing the lens. Inspiration, epiphany, a sense of harmony, it was all out there in the world to be found and captured, to be transformed through the photographic process, and reminding herself of this conviction, she set down her glass after two sips and rose to peer into the courtyard beyond the window, imagining a muse wandering somewhere beyond sight, something, anything, perhaps a building fire. Thus, Samantha grabbed her camera, slammed the door, descended the staircase, and emerged into the city.

The streets were bathing in an eerie transitional light as the trailing glow of the sun disappeared beyond the rooftops. Finding everything too soft for black and white, the gentle goodbye of the day and the gradual rise of the city lights bored Samantha’s eye. The golden horizon was waning into twilight as the townhouses faded in color, trees’ canopies became silhouettes, and the anonymous strangers passed in blurs. It was as if photographs she had already taken throughout the years were surrounding her like a noose, her neighborhood now oppressively familiar. 

While she was in high school, the lens’s power to transform the world around her had felt indomitable and as if the world itself were infinite. Seeing everything in new compositional forms, carrying the extraordinary beyond kaleidoscopic memory, and drawing the eye to the subtlest of details nested within the quotidian had been a constant fascination. A cherubim wrapped in power lines in an alleyway remained there fifteen years later. She could see the faint glint of the tiny marble object in the distance as she passed by, her own photographs of the thing flashing within her mind.  

Only a moment later she was thoughtlessly turning a corner onto a darker street where the streetlights had gone out while the images continued to echo. Then, pressing forward as if on autopilot, she began to imagine being elsewhere—a protest, a warzone, a stampede—until seeing a passing stranger in her peripheral vision suddenly thrust her back into the present moment. What captures the photographer’s eye in this way often defies one’s rational language. His face bore the stark contrast of a shop window’s flooding light on one side while the other now appeared engulfed in shadows, and the skies were fully drained of vibrancy as if night had rapidly consumed the world in the absence of her attention. The face and the ultra-luminescence of the window captivated her, an allure beyond simple questions of composition and lighting, and she instinctively grabbed her camera. The angles of the buildings, with smaller dimly lit windows in the background, the corner’s subtle glow of phosphorescent light over his shoulder, it did feel perfectly balanced, but there was something else, another layer, something pious in the way she had learned to sense and follow this reverent feeling in relation to a subject. Meanwhile, the crescent of light upon the man’s face appeared as a mask hovering above a specter, the shadows of the other side containing a faint reflection of a distant streetlight in his pupil. It was all clear as the sun to her, and she lifted her camera hastily, unaware of anyone but herself and the felt urgency. 

Reason in her mind spoke the whole time, yet it was powerless. She knew that the light was still too weak to capture the original apparition in crisp form, yet she pushed through. In the back of her mind, only a faint whisper cared about the abnormality of her manic movements, yet it grew silent to another force. Something else had taken over, a commandeering passion, and the window of time was terribly fleeting.

A split second later, camera raised, she gazed into the frame to compose, yet a sudden despair rose before she could snap the photo. In a matter of seconds, the vision had already evaporated as a perplexed man stood there staring into her lens, his face now fully illuminated. Samantha knew how it all looked. She imagined herself in his position at least, some rude woman accosting him with this anachronism strapped around her neck, shoving it in his face, but the vision continued to shine within her, and it was screaming to be realized as it drifted into the riptide of her mind’s darkness. Then a car began passing along the oddly darker block they stood upon. Samantha’s thoughts raced within the compression of time, unsure of what to say, and a panic surged. The headlights were destroying the asymmetrical balance of the image that had just been robbed from her. 

However, in the wake of the car’s passing and amidst her inner world’s churning disappointment, a clarity took hold. A struggling photograph seeking to birth itself pressed on within her. It always happens so quickly, imperfectly, contingency in the hands of the knowledgeable eye, and as the previously forking paths collapsed into a step forward, she perched her camera on a ledge, activated the self-timer, and entered the frame to reproduce the vision herself.

Meanwhile, as she leapt into action, the startled man scurried a few feet away to lean against a chain-linked fence covered in ivy and vines. He watched her curiously as she posed, the subtle movements of her chin tilting downward and her neck craning as she adjusted the angle of her face. She seemed oblivious to the world, but the unfolding scene was magnetic. Prior to this encounter, the most interesting thing the man had ever noticed here were car accidents, couples kissing, and rat fights. Yet it was as if the only thing that existed to this woman was the lens she was staring into. He was invisible. How vain she must be, he thought to himself. Yet as the flashes of the camera’s self-timer neared their countdown to zero, she became as still as a statue, and his thoughts grew silent too.

Samantha’s hair blew gently in a gust of wind and the man’s shoulder slipped along the fence as he lost balance in a thoughtless trance. Though he caught himself instantly, the rattle shattered Samantha’s focus and her eyes darted suddenly into his. A glowing pupil in the shadow flashed in unison with the click of the shutter. 

Thus, cursing at no one in particular, Samantha lunged toward the camera to set up a second attempt. Rushing through the manual winding of the film roll and decreasing the shutter speed with adept grace, she tightly controlled her breaths to hone her focus. However, the flustered bystander remained in her peripheral vision, an irksome inconvenience, and somewhere within her, a tempting voice wanted to shout at him. She kept her silence though, aware of her trespass into his world too and how often this voice whispered to her throughout the days. She always did her best to contain it, to sustain her austere façade. 

A moment later, Samantha had already returned to pose with visible indifference to the man’s presence. He did his best to remain more aware of himself, to observe without interruption. The self-timer’s blinks had long intervals in the beginning, and between them, he imagined helping, getting involved in some way, capturing her attention, being drawn into her world. Yet he stood there paralyzed with a mixture of fear and concern that he might scare her away. He assumed that she intended to be the model, imagined her posting the photos on social media, and he could already see all the other men commenting on them, guys in suits from banks. 

To him, she was clearly full of herself, her public fashion shoot trampling over his relaxing evening walk as if he were an insect. Her hair was cascading down her shoulders, perfectly straight, like silk. A long narrow band of light against the strawberry blonde was reflecting the shop’s radiating aura and her long navy coat opened to a light blue blouse with a hint of cleavage. She was wearing tailored black pants, thin like cigarettes. He wanted to take her home.

As the flashes began to strobe more frantically, the sternness of her expression puzzled him. It was sexy, yeah, but not like the women on social media, and as the shutter clicked, his portrait of her came into question. The whole scene of the block with the broken streetlights and a trash can in the background felt wrong, and the lighting was all wrong too. She was not even facing into the light properly. Half her face was obscured. “Perhaps I should intervene”, he thought, and—Click!—as her pose relaxed, he suddenly realized that it was his chance. 

“I can help!”, he chirped in immediately, stepping forward into the light. 

“Oh, sorry, no. I’m just taking a photo”, she stammered as he interrupted her train of thought. Her mind was rapidly seeking to compose another frame of the vision. She was worried that the film might not have truly captured the specter and the eye, whatever it was that had sent chills down her spine. Even if it had, she realized, there might be a better arrangement if the camera were held at a different angle. Only the model’s bust had been captured with the camera set horizontally upon the ledge, but for a split second, a passing thought distracted her. The man was exceptionally handsome.  

“No, really, I can help!”, he insisted eagerly, “I can take the photo, and you will only have to worry about posing!”

“No, I am a photographer. I’m supposed to be on this side”, she asserted while repositioning the camera between them. Then her expression softened, and a curiosity struck as she began examining him as a subject. He was deflated and clearly uncertain of what to say in the wake of her refusal. Click. She snapped a candid. It was raw. It felt right to her, and his face recoiled slightly, tilted into an expression of vulnerable confusion. Click. He started to stumble backward into the shadows, perhaps reproachfully now, but she did it again in rapid succession. Click. It was vivid, a helplessness at the exact moment before his face’s complete return into the shadows beyond the shop’s light. Something in his pupil pulsed in that moment too, but then she caught herself. It would all be a little bit blurry, but she imagined the wounded gaze with raw candid force shining through, something animistic in the way it transcends.

“I’m so sorry. The lighting was just too perfect. You were perfect. I hope that you don’t mind”, she said in a reassuring way, smiling as her camera fell with a thump against her stomach.

He was still regaining his lucidity as she spoke, and he adjusted his posture immediately. 

Delaying his response, he popped his chest out a little bit and craned his neck back confidently before responding, “You do that to everyone around here?”

“I mean, it’s just when I see something special”, she retorted.

“Oh, special, huh?”, he quipped hopefully.

“No, that’s not what I mean”, she snapped back with a scoff.  

Thus, he responded slowly with a leading confidence, “You mean you saw something special right here”, and Samantha giggled. It was almost a caricature, but it was executed so perfectly.

“You’re an actor, aren’t you?”, she had to ask in return.  

He hesitated at first, in confusion and apprehension, clarifying, “No, I’m a janitor. I work at the courthouse, the one downtown, always have.”  

“Oh, well, that’s nice”, she responded kindly before adding, “I have been there before, for my divorce”, she paused wistfully then, exhaled deeply, and rolled her eyes before snapping back into awareness to pointedly state, “but I never saw you there.” 

“So, you didn’t see anything special then”, he responded leadingly, a smirk on his face.

“Mmmm”, Samantha murmured in return, squinting as if the sediment in a glass of wine had just hit unexpectedly. The time to escape the situation had come. She had what she needed, and she reminded herself to focus on her work. Yet that clarity aside, the viable exit strategies remained obscure amidst the dim loneliness of the streets. Her eyes began to rapidly assess the surroundings as her mind ran simulations of what she might say. 

Sensing the ripples of her discomfort though, the man masked his disappointment, loosened his posture, and similarly pondered his next step. “Can I see the photos?”, he asked, thinking back to when the camera had been shoved in his face and wondering what they must look like. All he could remember was feeling unnerved and he began to worry that he might look like an idiot.

“It’s 35mm, so I have to develop the film first”, she informed him, the automatic professionalism overriding her prior state of concern. She turned the camera around to display the lack of a screen. “Also, I’m so sorry I did that”, she added more softly, “I get too excited sometimes. I… I…”

“It’s fine”, he interrupted, overcoming any part of himself that had felt angered or confused, “I mean, don’t go doing that to everyone, but I don’t really care.” He said it thoughtlessly, secretly wishing he could ask her to get a drink with him, but not seeing an opportunity.    

“I can send you the prints when they’re developed”, she assured him impersonally, rummaging for a pen and paper to collect his information. 

“I’d like that”, he said coolly, as if reading a script before jotting down his phone number and address in the best penmanship he could muster, wishing to be impressive. He wanted to change the current of the situation and sparks in his mind still flashed of her as another person. In one she was seated across from him with a cosmopolitan laughing at one of his jokes. Then in another she was undressing and giving him the camera. Yet there she stood, remote and distant as he gradually acquiesced to chasm between them.

Finally feeling more at ease and on the verge of leaving, Samantha suddenly remembered the formalities and added, “I have a model release form I will send to you. I might want to include the photos in a book, maybe a gallery.” Her voice trailed musingly with a cold detachment as her gaze drifted from their surroundings into somewhere intangible within herself. Thus, seeing her travel into some other world, any dissonance that had remained within the man grew silent in epiphany, quieter even than the empty streets as a clear portrait of Samantha coalesced in his mind.