Immortal

I must try to tell you about the people I make photographs with.  The stories are interesting.  You make arrangements to meet.  If you are lucky, they come.  The phone rings or there is a knock on the door.  You get up and let them in.  Sometimes they look nothing like the photos you've seen taken years ago before the two pregnancies or the car accident, or just two years.  Other times, you can't believe it.  They've had expectations, too, and you wonder what they see.  You are not what they expected, hoped for, perhaps.  Awkward talking.  They've come because they've like your work.  O.K., you say, let's get started.  You put on some music, yours, theirs.  They do whatever they need to do--bathroom, makeup, hair--while you open film and load cameras, set lights and meter.  The first awkward photo.  It is not what you want, of course, and you are already feeling failure.  You will let them down, you worry, where you intended to please them.  Then something works. Then something else.  None of this is what you planned, nothing is what you intended.  You work so slowly with the large camera and Polaroid film.  They must wait.  They stand, you look.  You ask them to turn. . . no, again, slooooowly.  Usually, there comes a rhythm.  You peel some film.  They are disappointed or excited.  You are, too.  You talk as you stand over the images.  You never know what you will hear, how it will be told.  You are authentically amazed.  It shows. They know.  Somehow the talk is always about them, never you.  They don't ask about you.  They know they are fascinating.  They are fifty-one, thirty-six, twenty-two. . . .  When they leave, you disappear.  Whatever they were, they remain.  They will always be that way.  Immortal.