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Darkroom
by Alice Rhee
Light is the essence of photography. It excites the miniscule
chemical grains that are suspended, inert, in the film's coating. The particles are light-sensitive; they will alter permanently in response to light.
*
The corner bodega sells melting popsicles for a quarter each,
stale churros wrapped in newspaper for seventy-five cents, and cans of Goya
beans and corn. A rusty metal fan, the grills hairy with dust, drives a
constant stream of air onto the neck of the woman behind the counter. The
door to the small, triangle-shaped store is propped open with a chipped
brick. Inside, sun-bleached posters advertise liquor and cigarettes. Mari
runs the bodega alone. Her husband collapsed and died at the same counter
she sits behind "Mon. thru Sat." His heart clenched like a greedy child's
fist while he was ordering a shipment of Neapolitan ice cream.
"Las lágrimas de un elefante." The sky always seems to be the
color of elephant's tears. Grasping the ledge of the counter like a last
hope, Mari hoists herself onto her sore, knobby feet. It is almost four, the
awkward hour when the city cannot be bothered to darken the bodega's door.
Someday, she dreams, four o'clock will be reserved for an afternoon siesta.
She will kick off her tight orthopedic shoes, and dance again with her
husband, in a jungle more lush and fragrant than New York City. With labored
steps, Mari shuffles to the door and turns the sign over from "Come on
in!..." to "Sorry…" She leans with her whole weight against the frame of the
door for a moment. From where she is standing, she cannot feel the sunshine
pool on her eyelids.
*
To freeze a subject in motion, a fast shutter speed is required. To have
the subject slightly blurred, a slower shutter speed should be used. A great
amount of creative expression lies in the ability to control shutter speed.
*
A man wearing a crisp European suit and an impatient expression
hails a taxi in front of a One Hour Foto, on a street crowded with mirrored
skyscrapers. This is Mr. Segundo. Check the Blackberry in the inner pocket
of his cashmere-blend overcoat: there are twenty-four minutes that have not
been forced into the mold of his company's mantra "Maximize Productivity!"
Somehow, they have slipped free. He plans on using the time to visit his
niece, Marisol. The last time he saw her—was it two or three months ago?—he
brought her a pink, glitter-kissed tiara, which Marisol treasured in the way
only a child could. She spiraled dainty pirouettes across the living room in
her socked feet, and left a chocolate ice-cream kiss on her uncle's cheek.
"I love you," she giggled. Her easy affection bewildered him.
Yet, is she anything more than a blur of pink and dazzle? Segundo never
returns Marisol's giddy voicemails. But enough. He's making an effort to see
her now, and that's what matters. Right? An unwanted memory swirls through
his mind, as if he had stared too long at the sun and was now suffering the
pulsing glare in miniature behind his eyelids. Voices of the past have
sought him out; they demand that he look them in the eye. Recall: those
glances his family exchanged when he left last year's Christmas dinner for a
business meeting, just as they were passing around the plate of chorizo for seconds. Recognize: the confusion, the resentment, the
eclipse of love
and hate, shaded in their eyes.
"Mi hijo, you have grown," his mother
remarked as he gathered his things amid aggressive protests and calls for
one final picture.
"Grown too much apart." Her dark pupils flashed beneath
the sag of her wrinkled eyelids, and though her vein-mapped hands trembled
as if in fear, their grasp was firm. She placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Grown…big. In the head. Comprendes?"
Segundo was successful. What more was there to understand? He valued sweat
and blood work ethics, but most of it went into lavishing his mother with
luxuries. Heaven knows she deserved them. A spacious, clean apartment with a
brimming pantry, and even cable for the television—she had it all now, but
still, it was not enough. Segundo checked his hurt anger and gave his madre
a brush of a kiss. By the time the waxy black layer of the Polaroid melted
away to reveal the party's already-nostalgic smiles, Segundo was gone.
Large family functions were avoided from then on, except for the
unavoidable ones. One such as his mother's unexpected death and burial one
week later.
Twenty-four minutes, if there isn't traffic, to win back his niece's paled
affection. The taxi swerves with a flourish, and Segundo bangs his head.
"Hey, watch yourself!" The cabbie yells. As if it was Segundo's fault.
Twenty-three minutes, now.
*
When used with black and white film, orange or red filters produce the
effect of dramatically darkened skies.
*
Colorful cans of expired food teeter against the bodega walls like an
unsteady modern art sculpture. Mari thinks that some day, they will come
crashing down upon her in a shower of Mama Frijoles and Goya Maize, an
explosion of frothy homesickness. She has neither the motivation nor the
energy to move them; living in constant fear is not second nature, but
first. Today is an especially stagnant day. The street kids' taunts of "Mari, Mari, moribunda," are stonily ignored. One afternoon many
margaritas ago, the fleshy neighborhood gossips agreed that Mari's
sullenness was tied to her husband's death. But when had she stopped
smiling, stopped cursing the children in the mother tongue when they called
her moribunda, zombie? When had she actually become a moribunda?
Sometimes, on hot days, Mari draws down a tinted plastic shade over the
windows so the wrinkled heads of lettuce and overripe mangoes won't spoil
further. The heat that hangs in the air is humid like a hot rag, emanating
from a sun that is felt but unseen. It makes her brittle bones ache. Mari
decides to yank down the blind, even though she knows it will not help with
the discomfort.
*
Focus is essential. If the distance between the subject and the camera is
too far, then the subject will blur. Amateur models have fixed focuses.
Sometimes blurring is deliberate, for artistic effect; more often than not,
it is the result of error in judgment.
*
Leave a message at the beep (beeeeep): 'Lara, it's your brother
Segundo… And I was, well, on my way here for a…business meeting in, uh,
Harlem' ( clears throat) 'and I thought I might drop by. But here I am, and
you guys are not home.' (Deep sigh). 'Well, I got your messages from a
while ago. You know how hectic everything is lately, so I couldn't get back
to you sooner. I thought we could catch up, see you and Marisol. How long
has it been?' (beeeeep)
*
Fill the frame. This usually requires moving closer to the subject. Do not
bulls-eye the subject's face when using the viewfinder; this will leave
empty space at the top of the frame. Use the whole frame interestingly.
*
Mari lives in the one-room apartment above the bodega. At night, yellow
streetlamp light filters in through the grime of her window and rests across
her tired brow. A muted conversation. People look like shadows, and shadows
look like criminals. In the dark of the street, she glimpses the lone figure
of her husband, walking so that every step was paused and heavy. His eyes
never left hers. When Mari was a small girl, her mother had warned her, with
a mouth so thin it was lipless, that a daughter of hers should do better
than to acknowledge ghosts. It would give them permission to interfere with
the living, and nothing good could come of that.
He continues looking. She turns her back. The loneliness grows like a
fibrous tumor on her heart, and she remedies the pain by delving into the
medicine cabinet of her memories. She treasures the echo of his laughter in
one vial, the scent of his hair in another. All these hundreds of potions
are so potent, but when their contents are poured together, a clear picture
of her husband fails to rise from the fumes.
She is silent.
The shame of forgetting makes it so.
*
Leading lines sometimes draw the eyes away from the subject. Sometimes the
leading line is the subject, as in the case of a picture of railroad tracks
going into the horizon.
*
The subway is Mr. Segundo's last resort. There really was no other choice,
since cabs rarely looped away from the city, across the boroughs, where
Segundo stood, feeling stranded. Although mass transportation festers with
rancid odors and mass murderers alike, the subway is effective, Segundo
rationalizes. But it will never amount to being more than homeless people on
wheels.
There are seventy-two new messages on his Blackberry, and over forty are
labeled URGENT! He shuffles through them for most of the ride. Surviving in
the business world is all about juggling, but few juggle knives as Segundo
does. He is an insider who still feels like an imposter. He remembers the
time his cousin Jorge, face blushed with alcoholic redness at a family
something or other, asked shyly if he could try on Segundo's suit. They
switched, black wool and premium cotton for a greasy khaki mechanic's
jumpsuit. It was incredible, everyone buzzed, how a wolf could look so
convincing in sheep skin.
Look, how diseased light casts a sheen on the packed car, accentuating the
creases of the passengers' frowns.
Look, how the rhythmic lurch and glide of the train on the tracks is
comforting to the chatty bag lady, who sporadically yells "Jesus is love!"
to an audience of vacant faces.
This is nothing unusual. No one looks. The train jerks into motion, sucked
into dark channels beneath the skin and the screams of narrow alleys. Subway
riders are equal in their need to make it back out alive.
*
Fixating too much on what's "out there" will lead the photographer to
neglect what's right in front of them, in the foreground.
*
The corner bodega is the first sight that greets passengers who have just
emerged from the bowels of the city at this subway stop. Mr. Segundo walks
up the stairs with his usual brisk intensity. His Italian leather shoes
click purposefully with every step, even as he wanders in this unfamiliar
neighborhood. Mr. Segundo tilts his head to read the street signs in the
illuminated dark. He gasps when he sees the silhouette of an old woman,
peering down at him. There, in a small window above the bodega —there! Her
face is blurred, but her eyes flash so familiarly through the dark. He
imagines he sees a kind of desperation in her hunched frame. Perhaps that is
simply his own afterimage reflected in the window.
The moaning wind brushes past his closed eyes. Segundo is a part of it now.
A stream of car horns and sirens glide over this street, in front of the
decrepit corner bodega: this street is hushed. They are two strangers,
living in each other's old photographs. |
