'Or downstairs.'
He grins again. 'Kind of a tip of the hat to the old man, you might say. Me being the only one of his bastards ever gave a shit.'
He finishes his weld, closes the valve of his gas tank, puts down his torch, and pulls up his visor.
'Bet I know why you've come,' he says, wiping his face with a rag. A good-looking guy despite a couple days beard growth, he reminds me of one of those underwear models, the brawny kind with surly mouth and soulful eyes.
'Wanna know whether I got some of Pop's old ‘art studies’ sitting around. Willing to pay top dollar for them, too.'
'Not exactly.'
He gazes at me. 'Well, I doubt you dropped by to see my work.'
I turn to the sculpture. 'Interesting piece.'
'It's for a Holocaust Memorial. Commissioned by a synagogue in Van Buren Heights.'
'The one on Dover?'
Chip nods.
I introduce myself. 'I'm more interested in your father's work, Chip, but I didn't come looking to buy more of it. Just want to ask a couple questions about a photograph I've got.' I hold up my eight-by-ten envelope.
'Woman with a whip?'
'How'd you know?'
Chip peels off his gloves, wipes his face again and then his chest, pulls on a black T-shirt, and extends his hand. We shake.
'Don't know which one you have there, but they're all pretty much alike. Different models, different poses, sometimes with some poor naked slob down on his knees groveling or licking the lady's boots. But the idea's always the same. Women rule. Dominatrixes. I know a lot about that, see, ‘cause my mom was one of ‘em. Which was why Pop adored her.' He gestures toward my envelope. 'Let's see which you got.'
We adjourn to the reception room to inspect my photo. Chip nods the moment I bring it out.
'Sure, I recognize her. Mint condition print, too.' He turns it over, points to some numbers scrawled in pencil on the back. 'Pop's darkroom notes, enlarger lens opening, print timing and such.' He turns the picture again, appraises it like a connoisseur. 'Mint condition vintage print. I've had collectors offer me two, three thousand bucks for one like this. Seems vintage prints of Pop's ‘Fesse’ line are highly desirable these days. Too bad they didn't discover him before he died. He could've used the cash.'
'Do you have any more like this?'
Chip raises his eyebrows. 'So you are a collector?'
'No, but I'm curious about this woman. Do you know anything about her?'
Chip scratches his neck. 'Hot day. What say we go down to the pub across the street? Buy me a couple of brewskies, I'll tell you what I know.'
The Rathskeller's one of those Teutonic places you find throughout the Midwest: imbedded exterior timbers, dark paneling within, wooden booths, gemutlichkeit stuff on the walls – oversize meerschaum pipes, fancy old beer steins, photos of stout guys in lederhosen, the occasional cuckoo clock, and friendly buxom waitresses wearing dirndls. In short, the opposite of Waldo's.
Chip Rakoubian is greeted warmly as we saunter in: 'Hey, Chipo!' 'Hot ‘nuf for ya, Chipper?'
We take a booth, he orders two mugs of the local brew, and, when they come, he takes a long, slow sip, then settles back.
'Pop was a fine all-around photographer,' he tells me. 'Weddings, portraits, catalogue work. Also corporate annual reports – beaming workers on plant floors and finely lit pictures of whatever they made: gleaming metal widgets, glossy machine tools, shiny objects radiating abstract beauty. The old man was a master of the lustrous inanimate object.' Chip takes another long sip. 'But there was another side, what he called his ‘personal work.’ Artistic nudes for one. For these he'd light the women the same careful way he lit the widgets, sparkle here, highlight there, making them look more like sculptures than living people.'
Chip shrugs. 'That was how he saw them, I guess. But then, later, with his Fesse series he followed a different route – fetish photographs of gorgeous dominant women holding whips. ‘Fesse’ means something like ‘spanked’ in French. I think the French word for spanking is fessee. Anyway, Studio Fesse was the marquee he put on them. People into that kind of stuff saw that and knew what to expect.'
I find Chip remarkably forthcoming about his father. He seems to enjoy discussing the old man's ‘personal work.’ Max, as Chip describes him, was not an especially impressive-looking man – stooped, of medium height, with the bushy eyebrows and beak characteristic of his Armenian heritage, excessively hairy ears, chest hair showing at his throat, with two wild patches of gray head hair flanking a shiny pate. But there was a quality about him, a gentle intensity that drew people in. It was this, Chip tells me, that made it possible for him to convince women to pose for him in postures that, had the suggestions been made by anybody else, they would have taken as the gravest of insults.
'He'd approach a woman, tell her he found her extremely beautiful, then hand her his card saying he hoped she'd consider calling him to arrange for a portrait sitting. Approximately half would accept, an extraordinarily good batting average when you think about it. With these women, in the course of the session, he'd create a bond. He adored women, you see – put them on a pedestal, and some women found they liked that very much.
'Say a week or so after the session, he'd invite the subject back to the studio to look at the prints. The portraits would be good, often the best photos the woman ever had taken. Then, if he felt there were possibilities, he'd show her some of his personal work, first the nudes, and then, after considerable coaxing, perhaps several of the whip photographs as well. Then, depending on the woman's reaction, he'd let it be known he'd be thrilled to take a few shots of her in a similar vein. Or, more often than you might expect, she might broach the notion herself.'
'They'd have great fun then picking out an appropriate wardrobe from his studio closet filled with fetish gear – riding apparel, glossy black boots, black leather bustiers, a huge selection of gloves and crops, plus all sorts of provocative underthings, lacy black bras, black silk stockings, stiletto-heel shoes in sizes ranging down to petite.
Provocative as the Fesse photographs were, there was no nudity in them. Cleavage – yes! Sexuality – the pictures radiated it. They were choked with implication, innuendo. But there was never anything vulgar or brazen, nothing that smacked of a pornographic magazine. Their brilliance lay in their restraint. That was the art of them. In his Fesse pictures, Max showed himself to be an artist. Which was why his Fesse series has become so collectible.
'The print you've got, the one of Mrs. Fulraine – the fact that she's bare breasted makes it a real rarity. Pop didn't distribute shots like that, never sold them to clients. But sometimes near the end of a session he'd ask a model whether she'd let him take a few of her stripped down just for fun. And if she did, they'd put in an extra hour, and, if he liked the negatives, he'd make just two prints, one for her, the other for himself.'
Chip met his eyes. 'I have Pop's album. There's a print in it identical to yours. So the print you have must have once belonged to Mrs. Fulraine.' He pauses. 'How'd you get it?'
'It came to me by a circuitous route.'
Before he can pursue the issue, I ask how his father met Barbara Fulraine.
Chip shrugs. Perhaps Max saw her, he says, when he was working on an annual report for Fulraine Steel. Chip knows the lady was murdered the following year. It was a famous Calista scandal – she and her lover gunned down in a sleazy motel room near Tremont Park. But he doesn't think his father would have made more prints of the bare-breast shot simply because his sitter was no longer alive. That wasn't Max's style, he was an honorable guy, and the Studio Fesse pictures weren't made for profit.
I ask Chip if he has other shots of Mrs. Fulraine.
He nods. 'Yeah, a few, but the one you've got is the best. Pop really caught something there, something perhaps the lady didn't recognize herself till Pop brought it out. You get the feeling from that picture she was truly relishing her role. I don't know much about her beyond that she was a society woman and that she was killed. I
