of something mischievous, and squeezed off a shot.
'Thanks, that was nice.'
'Bastard!' she hissed.
But I was extremely pleased. That encounter made me feel powerful. I was amazed at the speed of my recovery. I was no longer merely pretending to be in control; I felt that at last I was.
It was 2:00 P.m. on the fourth day when, without my contrivance, she finally broke down. I'd been circling her slowly, catlike, while she sat in her usual erect position on the stool. Suddenly she began to cry. I stopped my stalking.
'What's the matter?'
'You're violating me.' Her voice was raw.
I handed her a lens tissue to wipe away her tears. Then I helped her from the stool.
I led her to my bed in an alcove off the studio, where I keep a ceiling fan. I turned it on. I told her to lie down.
'Rest awhile. You'll be okay.' I patted her head, then left her alone.
I went into my darkroom. What the hell are you doing? I asked myself.
It was as if I thought that by photographing her so extensively I could somehow take her in, that film was blotting paper I could use to absorb her, capture her image and thus make her part of myself.
Half an hour later I came out, half expecting to find her gone. But she was ready to go back to work.
'Sorry,' she said, smiling.
'Sorry I acted that way. All part of the process, I guess…
I treated her more tenderly after that.
We didn't chatter when I photographed; all our talk took place during breaks. She asked me questions about photography and I gave her my views. When I asked her about her life, she happily filled me in.
She was from Cleveland. Her father was a doctor. Her mother was a violist who taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She had started studying music herself at Oberlin, hoping to make a career as a pianist, but after her second year she switched to acting, then quit college and moved to New York.
At first it had been a struggle; she'd taken advanced classes, supporting herself by working as a waitress. But lately things had been picking up. Her goal, she said, was to become a star.
'Not a movie-type star,' she explained.
'An actress who can play great parts greatly on the stage.'
Such a dream! It must be shared by a good ten thousand girls in the city at any given time, and the denouement for most of them is predictable too: a little spurt in their careers before the inevitable failure to connect. Except, Kim assured me, it wasn't going to be that way for her. She was determined; she had 'the sacred fire'; she would never give up. And that was why she was going to make it. Couldn't I see the determination in her face? 'Oh, sure, I see it all right.
Trouble is-it isn't you.'
'Then who the hell is me?' she demanded to know.
'When we discover that,' I said, 'we'll finally have our picture.'
On one of our breaks she questioned me: 'What's this thing you've had against shooting faces?'
'Sorry, Kim, it's not a 'thing.'
'What is it, then?'
I shook my head.
'Be fair, Geoffrey. Tell me about yourself. You're always making me expose myself to you.', I agreed she had a point.
'So what was the problem?' she asked,
I shrugged.
'Don't really know. Happened one day in the middle of a session. Got the shakes. Couldn't go on. Canceled. Sent the sitter home. Then it kept happening, always when I was shooting people. Suddenly I was stymied in my work. I'd read about stuff like that, phobic reactions-pianists losing control of their right hands, singers whose teeth chattered, runners fainting at the starting line. So I started going to shrinks. Spent lots of money, got lots of interpretations: I was afraid of being successful, afraid of relationships; I had 'survivor's guilt' about the PietA and all the money I'd made from it.
My girlfriend at the time told me I'd grown cold to people-including to her, she said. Shortly after she made that observation she packed up her bags and left. Then a new girl came along who told me I was 'wounded' in 'my spirit.' She, in Catherine Barkley fashion, would salve my wound and nurse me back to health. Unfortunately our eye contact was bad, so we never got our relationship off the ground. Eyeball to eyeball-see, that was the problem. When I worked I couldn't look people in the eye. Can you imagine a photographer with a problem like that? So I fell back on night scapes. You know-my 'turgid empty streets,' my 'boring malaise.'
Geoffrey-you know I didn't mean any of that.'
'It's all right. You've been long forgiven. Anyway, I like my night scapes. But how many do I want to make? You could have asked the same of Ansel Adams: 'How many of these gorgeous, pristine and totally empty grand landscapes do you want to shoot, Ansel?' He wouldn't have understood-they were his lifework. I don't feel that way. My night scapes are a project. But, unfortunately, there isn't much else I can do these days.'
'You miss the people?'
'That's just the point. That's what my 'boring malaise' is all about.
All my night streets are empty. they cry out for people. The way I cry out. But I can't seem to put them in.' She studied me.
'Not true.'
'What do you mean?' I asked.
'Don't you see, Geoffrey? You're shooting me. So now, obviously, you can.'
On the fifth day I was seized by a strong desire to photograph her nude.
Not to take pictures of her face when she was naked, as I had the day we'd started, but to make serious full- length nude studies of her body, with her features concealed, or at least not clearly seen.
'But why?' she asked.
'I thought we were working toward a portrait.'
'We are,' I said.
'This is another approach.'
She raised her eyes to the ceiling.
'If I'd known it was going to be like this!'
'Look, Kim-'
'Yeah, I know-I can quit anytime. Well, fuck you, Geoffrey Barnett!
Shoot your goddamn nudes!'
The nude sessions were trancelike for me. I'd study her, light her, move my camera in and shoot. Then I'd have her turn a different way, or I'd try a different lens, or I'd apply a different kind of light, then shoot her again. As I exposed each sheet, I'd feel an increasing need to expose another. Even as I worked I knew I was obsessed. But still I couldn't stop. was it Kim, or the project of shooting her, that obsessed me? I wasn't sure and grew confused. I realized I was exhausting myself, considered the possibility I was losing my grip. But still I worked on, in search of… I knew not what. Just mystery, I kept telling myself, the mystery in her, which I felt a need to capture, and by so doing to understand. But why? Why did I feel the need? What was it about her?
I agonized.
When I explained to her my conviction that it was a prevailing sense of mystery that always characterized the best photographic portraits, she asked why this was so.
'It's mystery that makes a portrait fascinating,' I explained.
'Without it a photograph is merely a picture. With mystery it becomes something else.'
'What?'
'Sounds pretentious when you say it.':'Say it.' 'It can become art.'
'So is that what you want to do-turn me into art?'
'Wouldn't be so bad if I could bring it off, would it?'
'Am I really so fascinating, Geof?'
