“This is where all the magic happens,” she said. The room wasn’t much bigger than a closet, with a worktable mounted against a wall and shelves laden with jugs of chemicals. She watched him scan the room, noting the bathing trays, the glass plates, the wooden frames, and stacks of mounting paper. Taking pictures was easy. It was developing them that was the challenge.
“I was planning to enlarge pictures today,” she said. “My camera only takes small photographs, but the government needs them to be at least eight-by-eleven inches, so we use an enlarging box to make them bigger.”
“Don’t let me interfere,” Luke said. “Do exactly what you would do on any other day. Pretend I’m not here.”
“As if that would be possible,” she quipped as she took a stack of small photographs from her satchel. She kept the negatives in a tin box but would only enlarge the best of them because paper and developing solution were expensive. “Here,” she said, handing Luke the stack. “Have a look and tell me which you think I should enlarge.”
“I’d rather sit here and watch you work. You’re more interesting than”—he glanced at the top picture—“a photograph of the US Capitol. I see it every day.You, on the other hand, are a living piece of art. A Gibson Girl. A Fragonard milkmaid. A Botticelli nymph.”
“I’m not a Botticelli.”
“No? Botticelli’s women are beautiful.”
“They’re naked.”
His smile was pure mischief. “Notallof them.”
“Most are. Look at those photographs of the Capitol and tell me which you think I should enlarge.”
She watched his expression as he studied them. He moved through the photographs quickly, but the narrowing of his eyes indicated complete concentration.
Then he froze, his expression shocked. “You took this?” he said, his voice aghast as he showed her a photograph of the Capitol dome.
“I did.”
“You had to be crawling on the dome to get this shot!”
“I was.”
“Are you insane?”
She fought not to laugh. “No. And I’m proud of that photograph. I had to work hard for it.”
“You had to risk yourneckfor it. How did you get up there?”
In truth, it had been rather daunting, but her father had pulled strings to get her access, and he was with her the whole way. The dome was eighteen stories high, and she climbed a series of interior spiral and zigzag staircases to get most of the way up. Things didn’t get truly frightening until she climbed higher, where interior metal trusses supported the weight of the dome. It gave her a claustrophobic feeling, and the windowless space made her feel like she was in the hull of a ship, completely surrounded by trusses peppered with bolts the size of her forearm to hold up the concrete dome.
She and her father crawled outside onto the narrow exterior workmen’s ledge so she could photograph the city from two hundred feet in the air. Stepping out into the bright sunlight had been awe-inspiring, but the wind tearing at her hair and clothing had been the biggest surprise. She’d gotten spectacular panoramic photographs of the city, as well as some close-ups of the embellishments on the Capitol dome.
She described the process of getting onto the dome, and Luke seemed both fascinated and appalled that she had done such a thing.
“My father was with me the whole time,” she said.
“He actually permitted you to do such a foolhardy thing?”
“My father has never stopped me from doing anything I truly wanted,” she replied. “Just the opposite. From the time I was a child, he taught me to dream big, and that if I wanted something badly enough, he’d let me fight for it. It didn’t matter that I was a girl. I’ve always known that he would be behind me the whole way.”
“Your father sounds like a wise man.”
She nodded. “I’m very lucky. Now, tell me which of the dome photos you think I should enlarge. I can only do four close-ups and five cityscapes.”
Luke handed the stack back to her. “I’m not an artist. You pick.”
She quickly selected the shots that showed the dome at its worst. An appropriations bill for restoring government buildings would be voted on soon, and the top of the dome wasn’t something officials could examine themselves.
She attached a large piece of bromide paper to a frame on one end of the enlarging box, then slid the original negative into a smaller frame on the other side.
“Now we need to darken the room, but I’m going to use the arc lamp to send a bright beam of light through the lens and then wait two minutes. The image will be imprinted on the larger piece of paper.”
