Snapshot
The photographer’s romance with pictures began as a mixture of magic, rebellion and the taste of dangerous chemicals as he worked without gloves. “Can you pose for me?” a small, bearded man asked his gorgeous girlfriend on the street one perfectly lit afternoon. She would not undress for just any stranger. The boyfriend would be the one to capture her flower, watered from the faucet of their clawfoot tub. Watching rippling images darken the toxic developing bath inside the same tub later filled him with an alchemist’s power
He experimented with himself too. It was impossible to steer clear of the police while driving unregistered cars the photographer sold for his girlfriend’s father, which ended with a week in county jail reading the only book in the lonely cell—a Bible of course. When he was released, that lump of wholly undigested words followed—bound between familiar black covers on the passenger seat of his still-unregistered cars passing cop cruisers, reflected from rear view mirrors in “thou shalt not” of stop signs or red lights, and waiting inside courthouses disguised as laws to drag him back to the dungeon. Sanctuary became a physical need. Their street was full of churches, temples, basilicas, synagogues, asrams. He prayed to every god, hoping one of them real. In the beginning was the word, and in the middle and end. What did photographs and movies have to do with purity? The proliferating pictures decorating his walls were idols, life frozen into graven images.
So the photographer turned professional rebel.
He had difficulty at first overcoming the rush of quick cash and easy money addiction suffered by every successful used-car salesmen. His first paid job was adjusting lights during shoots for an advertising agency. Nothing was quick about making an automobile or cheeseburger sexy. Behind curtains thousands of wizards sweated pulling levers and moving hot klieg lights a few feet left or right, trying to trick Pavlovian dog drool from lusting, trusting consumers. Meanwhile, the photographer’s assistant also fell in love with a brand-new model—the skinny one draped over a black convertible.
“What!?” his betrayed girlfriend righteously screamed out in pain. “How could you do this to me?” In her tight fists she held the skinny model's paper breasts, thighs, waists and legs still dripping developing fluid. The black-and-white shadows darkened until only a black blob remained. When she dropped the crumpled photos and picked up his pawnshop camera with anger, the light in the photographer’s mind went out.
“Don’t touch that!” They wrestled for a few seconds until an exploding flashbulb burst through their rage. They understood with a lovers telepathy that even if somehow the eyes of God were closed in pain, His angels were remembering for the future.
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