A Division of the Light

by Christopher Burns

  “I like some of them, yes.”

  “And where are they now?”

  “In my studio.” Gregory cleared his throat, not because he needed to, but because he believed that if he signaled a kind of hesitancy then Alice might find that more persuasive than a show of confidence. “You’re welcome to see them—if you wouldn’t find it unsettling.”

  For a few moments Alice appeared to be wondering how the images would look. Three youths walked past, swearing loudly, and a horn blared on one of the boats on the river. At last she spoke.

  “Is there anything unusual about them?”

  “What do you mean—unusual?”

  Alice moved one hand through the air as if it were some kind of signal. “I don’t know . . . any effects you hadn’t expected. Distortions of light; something like that. Anomalies in the emulsion.”

  “They’re digital. And they all look perfectly normal. Why shouldn’t they?”

  The shake of the head was made too quickly, as if Alice had recognized too late that her question had almost revealed something she wished to keep hidden.

  Sensing a need that he could not yet identify, Gregory encouraged her.

  “Did you feel anything when that thief pushed you?”

  “Just shock. And fright. I didn’t know what was happening.”

  “I mean, did it seem that you were falling in an extraordinary way, or that an observer might have misjudged what had actually happened?”

  Her eyes seemed to want to reach deep into him, but he stared back without giving way.

  When Alice next spoke it was with careful determination. “There is something unusual, isn’t there.” It was not a question. “You have to tell me,” she said.

  Gregory shook his head. “I don’t know what you want to find in those shots, but you’ll be disappointed. In one of them you seem to be lifting from the ground rather than dropping to it, but that’s an illusion. Perspective and body posture and the fall of light just make it seem that way. There’s nothing unusual or bizarre or inexplicable about it. Take it from me. If you photograph divers from the side of a swimming pool, without a horizontal in the frame, then often they appear to be rising and not falling. It’s an optical illusion. All cameramen know it. Riefenstahl used it in her Olympics film. Something similar happened on one of your photos.”

  Alice continued to stare at Gregory as if testing him out for an untruth.

  He repeated the invitation. “Check them out for yourself, if you want.”

  “If they’re digital then you could email them to me.”

  “I could. Except that I won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It goes against commercial principle. And the images are better in large prints. By the way, they don’t show that you’d been crying.”

  “I didn’t cry until I got home. That’s when the shock got to me.”

  “You’d been crying beforehand. We both know it. You’d been so distressed that your eyes had puffed up.”

  Alice looked down at the table, across to the cranes, and then back down again. Her fingers toyed with the handle of her empty cup.

  “Thomas likes rivers,” she said unexpectedly. “They make him think of the flow of time. He used to walk me along here and talk about ax heads and stone tools that have been found in the sediment. They’ve even found hippopotamus bones—did you know that?”

  But Gregory would not relent. “You were conscious of how you looked and you tried to hide the signs behind those dark glasses.”

  “You don’t want to give up on this, do you, Mr. Pharaoh?”

  “Not when I’m looking at someone who has a face that was made to be photographed.”

  Alice wondered if this was the kind of statement that all photographers were likely to make. She waited before speaking again.

  “How bad was it?”

  He shrugged. “Not bad. But noticeable.”

  “I was in a tearful mood, that’s all. The time of the month.”

  “You don’t expect me to believe that.”

  “I don’t care if you believe it or you don’t. It has nothing to do with you.”

  “In the short term that may be correct,” Gregory said. He waited for a heartbeat and went on. “And did it have anything to do with the man you live with?”

  Alice brought her arms closer to her body. Her voice had a raw edge. “Why should it have anything to do with Thomas? Are you my father or my brother, that you think you have the right to ask such questions?”

  “I don’t have any right. All I have is a professional duty. I need to be able to assess how a subject will present herself.”

  “I’m not your subject.”

  “There are photographs at my studio that prove that you should be. Don’t get me wrong—I’ve photographed people at their most vulnerable and injured. I could photograph you looking as if you were going through hell. But I don’t want to do that. I don’t want any problem to get between you and the lens.”

  “You talk as if we’d made an agreement. But we haven’t.”

  “No, I’m talking as if we’re going to reach an agreement.”

  “And yet you won’t let me see the pictures you’ve already taken, and which you took without permission and without my knowledge. Fate played a trick on me and you made use of it.”

  “But if there had been no robbery, if the street had been empty except for the two of us, then maybe I would have stopped you and told you who I am and what I do. If I’d been able to see the whole of your face I would have done that. Any photographer worth his salt would have.”

  “It wouldn’t have worked. I’d have walked away. Any woman would have.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  “Look, if you took photographs of me then I have a right to see them.”

  “You seem to be keen on rights. Those photographs are my property. You have no right at all.”

  Alice hesitated. Gregory believed that he could see her sway.

  “You could still let me see them.”

  “You have an invitation.”

  “I could give you my email address. You could make an exception and send them. Don’t you owe me that?”

  “I owe you nothing. I rescued you. It’s you who are in debt. The images belong to me.”

  A breeze blew up the river and ruffled her hair.

  “Did you want to meet me again just to torment me?” she asked.

  “No,” Gregory insisted, “I wanted to meet you again because I want to take more photographs of you. I could tell that you were my kind of subject. I still think that.”

  “Am I just an object to be seen through a viewfinder?”

  “Of course you’re not.”

  “You talk as if I am. You even said that my face was made to be photographed—as if that would flatter me; as if that was the point and purpose of my life. What are you going to say next? That you only have an artist’s eye for my looks? That you’re like some kind of disinterested judge?”

  “I wouldn’t claim that, no. But what I do claim is that there is something in you that responds to a lens. Some people have that quality but most don’t. Men can have it as well as women. You must have seen portraits where the subject’s personality seems to be radiating out from the frame. A skilled photographer has caught their spirit; an amateur couldn’t. It has nothing to do with exploitation. The subject’s life hasn’t been disrupted. In fact they’re usually delighted they agreed to sit.”

  “But not everyone.”

  “Nothing pleases everyone. An honest photograph will never appeal to someone deluded. But an honest photograph will enlighten anyone who truly wants to know more about themselves.”

  “I don’t know if that’s true.”

  “Believe me,” Gregory said, sitting back, “it is.”

  He had been so persuasive he had almost convinced himself.

  He just could not be certain whether eventually he would also be able to convince Alice.

  4

  She
had not known quite what to expect—something efficiently clinical, perhaps, with work carried out by tousle-haired unshaven youths in a white room with intense lights and skeletal tripods. In the event she found Gregory Pharaoh’s top-floor studio to be a converted loft with tall windows, large skylights and an uneven floor of varnished wood. A rack of industrial shelving had been filled with lenses, filters, boxes, files, books, lengths of cable and other items that were mostly unidentifiable. Propped in one corner of the room were tall polystyrene boards with crumbled edges and a fathomless purpose; next to them, folded flat, was what appeared to be a Victorian or Edwardian screen bought from a junk shop. Two or three wraps hung from an office hatstand. Nearby there was a noticeboard with letters, magazine cuttings and a few glossy prints, the size of a human hand, fastened to it by tacks. Alice looked quickly to see if her own image was there. It was not.

  The area where the sitters must pose was proportionately small. Two straight-backed chairs and a couch draped in Moroccan fabric were pushed against one wall. A circular object that could have been a reflector was leaning against one arm of the couch, and alongside this were two lightweight wooden frames, like painters’ canvases, one with a gray covering, the other with red. An aluminum stepladder had been closed and pushed up against a wall of ochre-painted brick.

  “I hope you weren’t expecting anything glamorous,” Gregory said.

  “More spacious, maybe. And less crowded.”

  “It would have been even more crowded a hundred years ago. This was a sweatshop for the rag trade. You can see that the walls, the floorboards and the windows are all original. The temperature varies a lot. It’s like living in a caravan.”

  Alice nodded. Men always talked too much when they wanted something.

  “When I first set up a business here I could only afford to rent this floor; I didn’t have the space downstairs. There was an old watchman—I took his portrait—but he wasn’t too reliable and there was always the chance of a break-in, so I kept my Hasselblad and my OM up there.”

  Gregory pointed up to the rafters. They were gloomy enough to appear unclean. A gray electric cable ran along the upper wall and connected some ceiling lights with fluorescent tubes.

  “I hid the cameras on top of that crossbeam so they couldn’t be seen from the floor. You needed a ladder to reach them. In those days most of the property round here was nearly derelict; nowadays everything is gentrified and this entire building is split up into little offices and studios. My immediate neighbor is a painter. I’ve seen his work loaded into vans by professional art transporters.”

  “You work on your own?”

  “These days, yes. To begin with there were two of us in business together. We used to do whatever we could get—fashion catalogs, holiday brochures, factories, boardrooms. I still do some work for a chain of expensive hotels. After a few years the partnership split and he followed his own path. I’m happier like this. If I’m exceptionally busy my daughter helps me—she can take a good shot if need be. Mostly the demand has grown in ways that mean that I often work far away from here. I prefer solitary work, anyway. I’m not one of those who are happy with a dozen people fussing around my feet all the time. Cassie’s official job is to deal with the bureaucracy; it’s an arrangement that suits both of us.”

  Gregory folded his arms and looked hard at Alice. She wanted to stare him out but instead had to turn away.

  “I thought you would have my photographs on show,” she said. “That’s what we arranged.”

  “They’re on the next level.”

  On her arrival Alice had pressed the intercom to be admitted and Gregory had met her as soon as she stepped inside. He had indicated his office on the ground floor and then led her up the stairs to the second. Now she realized that he must have deliberately taken her past the room where his work was stored.

  As if he could read her mind, he spoke again.

  “We used to have the floor below as a darkroom, but not any more. Most of us have had to go digital whether we like it or not, so these days everything is kept in picture files. For print copies there are a couple of professional inkjets downstairs that will do large format. For even larger copies or special papers I have an arrangement with two other studios. It makes economic sense.”

  “Why did you bring me all the way up here?”

  “I thought it would be worthwhile to let you see where I work.”

  He took a single step forward, and for a moment Alice believed that he was about to reach out and touch her face. Instinctively she moved back an inch.

  “What made you think I would want to see it? Do you think that all women want to be photographed?”

  “Yes, and men too. Most of us are vain in some way or another. But most don’t have a face made for a camera.” Gregory paused only for a second before going on. “Maybe your partner hasn’t got the insight to recognize that you have.”

  When Alice did not answer, he spoke again.

  “Sometimes it’s difficult to see the obvious.”

  Still she did not reply.

  “I know you told me his name,” he said. “I’m sorry but I’ve forgotten it.”

  She wondered if this were true; Gregory had easily memorized other things about her.

  “He’s called Thomas.”

  “And his surname?”

  Partly as an avoidance tactic, Alice crossed to the shelves. In front of her were boxes with coded labels, a plastic tray overflowing with what looked like random objects, and a row of large-format photography books along with some on painting.

  “Laidlaw,” she said.

  Gregory’s speech ceased to be discursive. They had reached the point he had wanted to reach.

  “And if this partner of yours doesn’t realize the potential of your looks, will he object to me photographing you? Do you need his agreement?”

  “I make my own decisions,” she said.

  “Of course you do,” Gregory said calmly, as if he had always known that for a fact. “The Weston is on the far right, after Stieglitz,” he added, “they’re alphabetical.”

  Momentarily Alice did not know what he meant, but then she read the name on a dust jacket spine and quickly realized that this was the man who had photographed the seashell. That was another thing that Gregory had remembered without effort—the postcard she had sent.

  She had not deliberately sought it out; instead it had seemed fortuitous that she should chance upon a card that a professional photographer would find pleasing. She had not consciously intended the card to carry any message other than the few words that she had written. But now she wondered if Gregory believed that she had chosen it to demonstrate her taste and, by inference, an interest in him.

  Alice took the book from the shelf and leafed through its pages. Here were shells that gleamed like silver, trees with bark furrowed as deep as a field, pebbles speckled like eggs, landscapes infused by dawn light, and discreet middle-distance nudes whose bodies had the cool texture of marble. And here, too, were unashamedly graphic shots of a thin young woman stretched out naked on grainy sand with her arms and legs apart to show dense black stars of pubic and axillary hair.

  She closed the book and returned it.

  “I thought you liked Weston,” Gregory said, and she wondered if the studied neutrality of his voice was in itself a kind of challenge. “Or maybe you know all the contents,” he added.

  “Tell me, Mr. Pharaoh: is it just my face that you’re interested in?”

  “Of course it’s not just your face. But whatever we did, and however you posed, it would be by agreement.”

  Alice looked up through the skylight. High above the city a plane cut a thin white line across the sky, the vapor widening and dispersing behind it.

  “Maybe your friend Thomas doesn’t even photograph you. Does he?”

  He had done, but Alice had decided that she looked undistinguished, with no trace of individuality, and ever since then she had avoided standing in front of a lens. But at least
she now had an opportunity to lessen the tension by talking about Thomas.

  “He takes photographs of archaeological sites. Wherever we go on holiday, he goes to see old forts, stone circles, barrow mounds. Things like that.”

  “I see. Is it interesting to live with someone who is so bound up with the past?”

  “It would be if he could get a decent job.”

  “Ah. Problems.”

  “Thomas lives on short-term contracts and low-grade work. He does some teaching, but he doesn’t really like it. I don’t think his degree is all that good: that’s the real problem.”

  Gregory had a faint smile. “As long as he finds beauty somewhere. Even if it’s just in heaps of old stone.”

  Ready to move on, Alice became brisk.

  “I think it’s time I saw those photographs you promised, don’t you?”

  “Of course, we’ll do that now,” Gregory replied, as if his only true purpose were to keep her happy. “Remember to be careful of the stairs. They made them steep back when this was built.”

  They descended a bare echoing stairwell whose walls had been left unpainted for decades. Only a few minutes ago Gregory had led Alice past the door that he now opened.

  Behind it was a room that was the same size as the upper studio. Roller blinds the color of onion skin had been pulled down across the windows. He raised each one so that light gradually strengthened across files, cabinets, tables and computer screens. Copies of photographs, mostly black-and-white, had been placed around the room like offerings. Some were close-ups of faces that appeared familiar to Alice even though she could not put names to them, but most were of strangers. Some of these people, she realized, might already be dead. And for Gregory that might not even be important; what was important was the image they had left behind.

  For a few vertiginous moments Alice imagined that she had entered a region composed of nothing but surface, spectacle and deceit. And then she gathered her thoughts and told herself that she was meant to be here. The physical world had a shadow, a twin, an undetected ghost. Somewhere alongside this very moment there was an indefinable space that was both analogous and aloof. In a way that Alice could not comprehend, she was fulfilling an arrangement that had been determined without her knowledge.