FRAME ONE
NAKED IN YOUR EYES
Never in my life have I felt as exposed as when he looked at me. His eyes weren’t even directly set on me. There was still his camera and lens between us, but maybe that was precisely why I was sweating. The suit I had put on for this—stupidly thinking that a portrait for an editorial inThe Ratio Aspectcalled for it—hid every inch of my body I wouldn’t want just anyone to see. Still, his eyes pierced right through the fabric, through my skin, muscles, and bones, down to my innermost core.
I sat on a barstool in front of a gray backdrop they had set up in the middle of the gallery, where my photo exhibition would open tomorrow. Thick black curtains blocked the daylight that usually came through the distinctive floor-to-ceiling windows that won our arts center an architectural prize when it was built ten years ago.
With the studio flash’s modeling light in my face, I could only make out his faint silhouette. My eyes squinted, trying to bring his outline more into focus.
We had only met ten minutes earlier. Like I hadn’t looked at anyone’s face since arriving here, I hadn’t looked at his either. The whole ordeal of bringing in a photographer to takemy portrait was nothing but a disgrace. Initially, they asked me to take a self-portrait since it was customary for all the photographers they featured, not knowing that taking pictures of people—including myself—was the one thing that made me feel like a fraud. No matter who was in front of my lens, they never looked the way they did in real life. It took me two full business days to tell the columnist that I wasn’t comfortable doing a self-portrait, and only then did she offer to bring in one of their “talents” to do the honors. Said “talent” was him.
When he held out his hand to me, I shook it, focusing solely on the firmness of his handshake so I wouldn’t give away my embarrassment. Somehow, he must’ve sensed that I wasn’t eager for any of this, because right then, he suggested we get the shoot over with before the interview. I agreed, much to the visible dismay of the columnist, who seemed eager to throw her questions at me first, so she wouldn’t have to witness the disaster about to unfold. That was what I expected, at least, when I sat down in the middle of his setup.
But the moment he lifted his camera and asked me to just be myself, I was suddenly engulfed by his presence.
His face hid behind the camera, peeking past it every few seconds as he made some adjustments, but never long enough for me to see more than the soft bangs of his brownish-black hair brushing against the camera’s body. Even without being able to see his face, my whole self lay at his feet like prey to the hunter, entirely at the mercy of that overwhelming energy he radiated as he stood there, watching me through his lens.
The lens and I stared each other down, as if something big was bound to happen. As if one of us, if we only tried hard enough, would break. It was a showdown: me versus the camera; me versus that unbearable urge of society to pull anyone who becomes even remotely popular into the spotlight; me versus that presence of his that made me want to rip the camera fromhis hands to finally see the face that now intrigued me so much. If the picture he was about to take had even a tenth of this energy, it would be a cover-worthy portrait.
I inhaled deeply, preparing for that familiar click of the shutter, for the flash about to explode in my face, for that moment of truth that had kept me on edge ever since I sat down, when, without warning, his gigantic presence vanished. It was as if he wasn’t there anymore. His entire existence shrank to the tiny part that was his eye, pressed against the viewfinder as he looked at me, honestly, really trying to seeme.
A single drop of sweat rolled down my temple as I held my breath. But instead of taking a picture, his index finger moved away from the shutter button.
“Brian?” His soft voice echoed through the gallery. “Are you uncomfortable?”
Of course he’d notice.A photographer of his caliber had to be that perceptive.
“I’m as comfortable as one can be,” I replied to save face.
He peeked past his camera. “Would you be open to a little experiment?”
The first thing that came to mind was that he was going to ask me to strip, so I would be as naked as I already felt. But that certainly wasn’t going to happen. Maybe if we were alone and I knew there wouldn’t be a camera within a ten-mile radius, maybe then, but only if he were to strip naked too, allowing me to explore that mind-absorbing energy of his.
“What experiment?” I grumbled.
“Give me a second,” he said and jumped away into the darkness behind him.
I repeatedly adjusted my gaze, hoping to see what he was doing, but besides some shuffling around, I couldn’t make anything out. I glanced at the columnist waiting to the left of the studio flash. Her fingers clutched around a sparkling pen asshe took a note as if this were already part of the interview. She shrugged with a smile before looking toward the void he had vanished into, as if she had no idea what he was planning either.
Three seconds later, he emerged with a print of the very picture that had landed me on the cover ofInternational Geographicand, consequently, this interview: a photograph of an old barn being torn apart by a tornado. “A rough and honest capture of how much we are truly at the mercy of the planet,” the columnist had said earlier, only catching half of what I wanted to showcase with this meticulously planned shot that took me almost three years to achieve, and somehow, had catapulted me to the heavens of photographer stardom overnight.
He stepped into the light and held the picture out in front of me, finally giving me a chance to fully take him in. A three-day stubble darkened his jawline, and his unruly hair kept getting into his brown eyes. His tall, slender frame strained against his snug jeans, revealing just enough of what was hiding underneath to make my gaze linger longer than it should.
“Would you mind holding that in your hands?”
What a banal idea.Showing the artist with the picture that made him famous. I might have made up my mind about him too early. If that was all the talent they had attributed to him, then this would take forever if I didn’t give him some direction.
“Look,” I said, pausing, trying to remember his name. He had definitely told me, but of course, now I couldn’t remember. “Sorry, what was your name again?”
“Call me Theo.”
“Isn’t that a bit too cliché, Theo?” I turned the frame around and held it in front of my chest with a fake smile. “That’s been done, like, a million times.”
If this were his brilliant experiment, we could have done it all at tomorrow’s opening event. He could have had me pose next to the floor-to-ceiling print the gallery had specificallycommissioned just for this exhibition. Then they could’ve at least saved some money on this smaller canvas, which would likely end up in the trash in twenty minutes.
“Oh, no.” He chuckled. “That’s not what I was going for. Let me show you.” He hurried back beside the studio flash and raised his camera. “Could you turn the canvas back around?”
“So… that it faces me?”
