Pictures of a Woman You Never Knew

I

You’ll never forget the first photo you take of her, and neither will the rest of the internet.

Tabloid photography feels a world away from art school, but you’re trying to find the connections. The other guys laugh at you, mocking your fastidious concern for composition, but you’re starting to pick up the tricks of your new trade, committing the right angles to memory.

You’re standing on the sidewalk down the block, camera loose on the strap around your neck, peeling crinkled bills out of your wallet. It’s been hours, and you skipped lunch. All your buddies are lurking outside of the gilded doors down the street, waiting for the A-listers to stream out, but you look up and see one leaving the pizza joint all on her own. She’s just coming off the premiere of her breakout film, the one that’ll get her the Oscar nomination, but neither of you know that yet. Right now she’s just an especially pretty woman eating a greasy slice of pepperoni with her fingers.

It's still early enough in your career to wonder whether you’re taking something from her, something she won’t be able to get back. You can see that fear reflected in the way she hesitates, like she’s mentally paging through the flipbook of expressions her face can make. But then she decides to smile and it’s like a gift she’s giving you, so you dismiss your earlier concern, obediently line up the shot.

The contrast of her glamour with the low-brow backdrop will brand her relatable, the heels traded out for scuffed black flats conveying a down-to-earth demeanor. It’s still early enough in her career that this actually feels like a possibility, as if she’s a regular person who stumbled onto a film set by accident, as if she’s just like anyone else, hell—just like you.

When you look back at the photo after you’ve sold it, it’ll give the false appearance of eye contact. But of course, all she sees is the camera. Hidden behind it, you might as well not have a face at all.

II

A few of you cluster outside the club, waiting for her. One tries to make a joke about the name for a group of paparazzi, but it’s bad and drawn out and no one really laughs when the punchline hits. Your grip on the camera is clammy. It’s warm out tonight; she’s making an announcement, you got a call to be here, and now she’s late to leave. You’re feeling antsy, electric. This is after the pop star starts dating a photographer; there’s a new, crackling feeling of possibility in the air, as if it could happen to any of you.

Eyes on the door of the club, your mouth starts running. You bring up something you heard at art school—not art school again, one of the others groans—about an old belief that taking a picture was a way of stealing someone’s soul, as if bits of your essence could get chipped away in pieces by the camera’s flash. The older ones shake their heads, roll their eyes, but you’re really on a roll now. What would that make you, then, if this were true?

You laugh, but the sound is hollow. Guilt bubbles up inside you, though it’s never very far from the surface these days. You’ve been making good money lately; you have a knack for the unexpected. The same as us, the headlines above your photos often claim: a Bond girl jogging in transparent leggings and an unkempt topknot; a disheveled action hero leaving the liquor store just a few weeks after telling a journalist he was sober. But they’re not mad at me, you’ve tried to reason with yourself, checking your bank account in guilty pleasure, something twisting in your gut. They’re scowling at the camera.

Back in art school you were a chameleon of style; you adopted others’ trademarks easily, mimicking your classmates or the masters at will. The resulting critique was that you didn’t have your own vision. That you were nothing but a shadow—a paltry echo—and this fear haunts every photo you’ve taken since.

Suddenly the others scramble, toss their cigarettes, but you’re poised to capture the first flash of her red dress when she appears, her announcement following close behind. They hold hands loosely on the steps, searching for the cameras. He’s older than her; you recognize him from indie flicks, things you and your buddies saw back at school, taking up a row of seats in the theater and then talking cinematography at the bar afterward. You’d bullshit about symbolism for good measure, but truthfully most of his stuff was over your head, made for someone smarter than you, or at least someone who used the word auteur on a regular basis.

Her movies, though—big-budget historical romances that simply make you feel. Every time it’s as if she’s reached through the screen and prised your shriveled heart from your chest, still beating.

He gestures gently with a half-empty water bottle and her eyes light upon your group; she switches almost imperceptibly into camera mode. She’s gotten quite good at what she does, just like you. But there’s something about the way she leans into him—the movement seems forced, awkward, as if someone else has positioned the two of them like mannequins. Your eyes flicker back to hers, a question within—why is she with him, why stage this, what is she hiding? The best pictures tell a story, a teacher told you once. But tonight her stoic gaze betrays nothing. She looks out at the cameras and smiles.

It isn’t your place to speculate about the happiness of strangers, after all. She’s a rich woman, a celebrity, a person you’ll never know, and you have a job to do. So you take the picture. But looking at her again later on, you’ll remember what you were thinking. What you sought in that impenetrable gaze.

Funny, isn’t it? The way every picture you take ends up being a little bit about you.

III

You’re leaving the liquor store when you see them together. The lone streetlight dapples a pair of entwined bodies as they nestle into a closed storefront, trying to avoid the drizzle. Out of inescapable habit you admire the composition of the shot, the way she’s tilting her head down to look at her companion. Art school boy, you hear the older photographers in your head, and you almost laugh, but that’s when you realize:

He’s not her husband.

You fumble the paper bag you’re holding. Her career’s lagged lately; she’s put out a couple middling romances that lacked the same spark as the early ones you watched back when you were both starting out, though sometimes you wonder if your enjoyment had less to do with the objective quality of the film and more to do with the moment in your life that you saw it. The way it felt like everything was beginning for both of you.

The look on her face now reminds you of her best movies, the unadulterated feeling of her most acclaimed romance. In all the pictures you’ve taken you’ve never seen anyone look at someone like that. No one’s ever looked at you like that. You want to remember it. This is what you tell yourself, as you reach for your phone—you just want to capture this moment for yourself.

But that’s not the truth, is it? Later you’ll reach out to an old connection, admit you’ve got a breaking story, a scandal in their favorite flavor. You were forced to confront your finances just moments ago in the store behind you—try this one, you muttered to the cashier, scrabbling for a different plastic card in your wallet. Things have changed; everyone’s a photographer now, walking around with wifi-connected cameras tucked into their back pockets. And who are you? Just some washed-up wannabe thousands of dollars in loan debt, trying to make a living.

She kisses his top lip, pulls back, opens her eyes. The way she looks at him is somehow even more romantic than their kiss. Who is he? If you don’t recognize him from the movies, he must be nobody. And it doesn’t matter, really, not to you, anyway—it matters more who he is not.

You waver there for a moment outside the liquor store, guiltily clutching your phone. You already know the camera will never adequately capture the purity of her joy. And by taking a picture you’ll be puncturing that joy like a needle through the latex skin of a balloon. A single photograph could explode the universal favor she’s cultivated, these days relying not so much on active success as a collective nostalgia for her earlier films, and by extension her audience’s own youth. Those stories that once comforted you your first lonely year in the city, when all you could afford to furnish your new apartment was a TV and a couch yet the sight of her smile alone made you feel like a goddamn millionaire.

The man who’s not her husband makes her laugh, which looks great in the little window of your screen. She covers her mouth with her hand to dilute the compulsive giggles but you hear them anyway, filtering through all the city noise across the street where they reach you and remind you of your younger self, sitting on your couch in front of your TV, watching her laugh and imagining the artist you were going to be one day.

It’s true that you have never allowed yourself to mourn the person you thought you would become.

You zoom in on her face with a flick of your fingers just as her eyes finally drift from her companion; there’s no bulky camera body to hide you now. It happens in an instant: Her eyes widen, a soft valley creases between her brows. She sees you for the first time, and you have the strangest urge to smile. But of course, you’ve already brought your finger down.