June 15, 2004
#126 :: Daguerrotype
With his high collar, white tie and neat combover, he was a lawyer, perhaps. Or a doctor, or a judge. Not a man of action, but a man of words and rules, someone for whom people had grown accustomed to performing as expected, or the devil take the hindmost. The photographer had sat him down in this rather uncomfortable chair, informing him that the best exposures took up to a couple of minutes and were best achieved with the subject in absolute stillness and composure. He sat there, his back against the stiff iron brace of the chair's skeleton back and leveled an even gaze at the lens. Behind it, the photographer huddled beneath the black cloth, looking at him - or a reverse image of him, his head where his sheet would be - and murmured a steady stream of gentle entreaties to keep absolutely still. He stared obligingly and as do all men of good breeding and steel nerve, waited patiently. He blinked once - perhaps twice - something evident in the filmy aspect of his glare, as if the camera captured the brief flash of light reflecting from his eyelids, but every other feature remained as sharp as the edge of the straight razor his barber of 38 years used to shave him that very morn. When the photographer replaced the cap on the lens, slid out the negative carrier with gingerly care, he allowed himself to relax - a bit - then gathered himself and his hat, gloves and stick, and returned to the courts. Or the surgery. A few days later, upon seeing his image so crisply retained by the miraculous chemicals of the dark-room, he was so pleased he paid extra to have the photographer tint the work with a hint of blush and frame it in proper gilt, to make the image and its keepsake case more pleasing to his good wife, who was the mother of their children and the foundation of his home.