Eight Girls Taking Pictures Read online

  One bird landed on a woman’s hat, another on a man’s bare head, his hair worse for the experience; mostly they swooped and made a mess as amazement turned to chaos, with Herr Neubronner alternately trying to redirect the birds and regain the crowd’s attention. No one listened as they fled the room in their now white-flecked clothing, Cymbeline, Julius, and Otto pressing themselves against the outside wall of the adjacent room.

  Cymbeline caught somewhere between amusement and disbelief. “Just when I was worried that taking a decent picture required no greater skill than having a camera strapped to my chest.”

  “You don’t need a class,” said Otto, “you need a dovecote.”

  “And a raincoat,” said Julius, laughing along with the other two. He barely touched Cymbeline on her shoulder, his hand almost hovering. “The Himmlisch on Saturday,” he reminded her. “Bring your camera. Buckled to your body.”

  And just as quickly as she felt the three of them united in their luck at missing the Wrath of the Bavarian Pigeon Corps, she again felt excluded from the company of the men. She couldn’t say why, or how, this happened; she was accustomed to feeling outside the groups of her male classmates, but this was different. This was a puzzle she couldn’t quite put together.

  “I want you to see the difference when photographing flowers in the garden.” Julius was coaching Cymbeline as he set up to take pictures of the few flowers still in bloom in the Himmlisch Garten before the season finally changed. She was more interested in the shrubs and the trees, with their variety of leaves and branches.

  She sighed.

  “What?”

  “I can’t attach any meaning to any of this,” she said. “That is, I don’t know why I would want to take these pictures.” Nor could she attach any meaning to his interest in instructing her outside of class, an interaction that left her unable to completely get her bearings.

  “We can’t always photograph that which engages us—unless you are a rich girl prowling around for a hobby. Something that you can tell your friends about. Some sort of Kodak Girl,” he said in reference to the advertising posters of a well-to-do girl with a Kodak camera. A pretty amateur. The ad campaign encouraged photography as a harmless hobby, something to do before marriage.

  She told herself, He is teaching me. He is a teacher. Not a friend. Not a lover. Yet the tone of his voice and his implication that she was unserious in her pursuit of photography cut her. It was unlike her to be so sensitive to something some man said—she had spent enough time with men in chemistry class and botany labs and working for the famous, awful photographer to disregard their remarks as they often disregarded her. Even an internationally established photographer like Alfred Stieglitz (something of a guiding light for her), whom she’d met when passing through New York, could barely hide his impatience as she confessed her ambition to have a picture appear in Camera Work.

  She had wondered at times why her father bought her art lessons or encouraged her to attend the university. It wasn’t lost on Cymbeline that everyone loved and admired the eccentric heiress, the rich girl who defied societal expectations. It was the rebellious working-class girl they mistrusted; not only should she be working but she should be working for them. Cymbeline had learned from a very early age that money buys things that people with money never even realize they’ve bought, like time and freedom. Because their privilege came to them so naturally, it was unimaginable that others didn’t have it too; that is to say, if others didn’t have it, perhaps that was because it would be wasted on them, the rich always seeming to believe themselves meant for better things.

  There was something tough at her core, Cymbeline knew. Was it being singled out by her father, who’d named her for a king, or was it wanting to be a photographer, so much so that she would suffer anything to have it?

  After months in Julius’s class, she was seldom invited to study sessions or included in coffee-fueled discussions with her male classmates. They weren’t rude to her; she didn’t count enough for rudeness. True, she was older than most of them, but not by much. And she knew that she wasn’t a common beauty, something that shouldn’t matter yet always does.

  The closest she came to any sort of professional camaraderie was when one of her classmates—perhaps the most talented—asked if she would sit for him. He explained that he needed the practice since he planned to open the best studio in Berlin, then said that he’d heard she had some skill in printing, so it was possible that he would allow her to print something for him. And, he added, if all went well, maybe she could do even more work for him. No pay, of course, but what a great opportunity for her to hone her darkroom skills, and besides it would free him up to take more pictures.

  Cymbeline said, “Maybe,” while thinking about the rustic darkroom her father had built for her during her college years, where she printed by candlelight coming from a red paper box. There were all those botanical slides, not to mention the conceited Seattle photographer and the sheer luck of being able to work with his German assistant, who’d taught her so well and so patiently. There never seemed to be enough hours in the day for her own photography, especially when she was diligent enough to try to get it right.

  She thought about the way the men in her class went on and on about their ambitions, philosophies, and ideas without ever asking her a single question. She thought about the confidence it took to believe that only what you did was important, that a man’s artistic perspective of the world was the only perspective.

  It was a funny place for women photographers where they were accepted into the profession (usually taking soft-focus Pictorialist scenes of domesticity)—some were quite well-known—and they were always a half step behind their male counterparts.

  So when Julius Weisz made his remark about her work as a hobby, it wasn’t anything she hadn’t heard before. What was new was hearing it from him.

  Julius sighed. “You should understand that I’m not asking you to find the thing in a subject that engages you—rather I am suggesting you see that subject in a whole new way—as photographer, see it so that everything will interest you.” He said, “You can do this, Cymbeline.”

  Here was the strange thing: She understood absolutely that he believed in her ability, yet his belief had the effect of suddenly making her doubt herself. And something else, too; she had a moment of hard clarity that her life, her woman’s life, would be full of choices—ordinary ones a man might not even see as choices but as “life”—that would constantly be canceling each other out.

  “These plants may not mean anything to you because you aren’t ready to understand them. Listen, we are not always meant to get everything all at once. And what I mean is that they may not have any complexity for you right now—not like the cut flowers with their combination of beauty and decay, right? Like trying to hold on to nothing. You need to see that everything has something underneath. The seen and the hidden. Nothing is what it seems to be—the underneath. Do you understand?

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Come. I have someplace else to show you.”

  Julius explained that the palace rooms where they stood were called Wunderkammers, or wonder rooms. Souvenirs of nature, of travels across continents and seas; jewels and skulls. A show of wealth, intellect, power.

  The first room had rose-colored glass walls, with rubies and garnets and bloodred drapes of damask. Bowls of blush quartz; semiprecious stone roses running the spectrum of red down to pink, a hard, glittering garden. The vaulted ceiling, a feature of all of the ten rooms Julius and Cymbeline visited, was a trompe l’oeil of a rosy sky at dawn, golden light edging the morning clouds.

  The next room was of sapphire and sea and sky; lapis lazuli, turquoise and gold and silver. A silver mermaid lounged on the edge of a lapis lazuli bowl fashioned in the shape of an ocean. Venus stood aloft on the waves draped in pearls. There were gold fish and diamond fish and faceted sterling silver starfish. Silvered mirrors edged in silvered mirror. There were opals and aquamarines and tanzanite and amet
hyst. Seaweed bloomed in shades of blue-green marble. The ceiling was a dome of endless, pale blue.

  A jungle room of mica and marble followed, with its rain forest of cats made from tiger’s-eye, yellow topaz birds, tortoiseshell giraffes with stubby horns of spun gold. Carved clouds of smoky quartz hovered over a herd of obsidian and ivory zebras. Javelinas of spotted pony hide charged tiny, life-size dik-diks with velvet hides, and dazzling diamond antlers mingled with miniature stuffed sable minks. Agate columns painted a medley of dark greens were strung with faceted ropes of green gold.

  A room of ivory: bone, teeth, skulls, and velvet.

  A room crowded with columns all sheathed in mirrors, reflecting world maps and globes and atlases inlaid with silver, platinum, and white gold; the rubies and diamonds that were sometimes set to mark the location of a city or a town of conquest resembled blood and tears.

  A room dominated by a fireplace large enough to hold several people, upholstered in velvets and silks the colors of flame. Snakes of gold with orange sapphire and yellow topaz eyes coiled around the room’s columns.

  Statues of smiling black men in turbans offering trays of every gem imaginable—emerald, sapphire, ruby, topaz, diamond—stood at the entrance to a room upholstered in pistachio velvet, accented with malachite, called the Green Vault. Peridot wood nymphs attended to a Diana carved from a single pure crystal of quartz studded with tiny tourmalines. Jade tables, and jade lanterns. The royal jewels, blinding in their sparkling excess: crowns, tiaras, coronets, diadems, heavy ceremonial necklaces, rings, and bracelets that could span a forearm, surrounding the world’s largest and most perfect green diamond.

  Above it all was a night sky of painted stars, with inlaid cut crystal set in a series of constellations.

  Cymbeline had to sit down once they were outside the palace because she felt that she had just been miniaturized and trapped in a box of heat and light. It was if she had narrowly escaped a place meant to be astonishing and unworldly and desirable where all she felt was anxiety.

  As she slowly recovered from this fever dream of opulence, she turned to Julius and said, “You’ve made your point. Something so glittering like—”

  “—Grünes Gewölbe or, in English, Green Vault—”

  “—could be heaven for someone like—” She looked to him.

  “—August the Strong, who built it in the early eighteenth century—”

  “—but it’s unbearable to me, even though I can see the appeal for someone else. What should be thought of as beautiful is really a show of power, though it could be thought to be merely beautiful. But it isn’t—it’s intimidating. I understand now: There’s always an underneath.”

  “No, no, Cymbeline.” He laughed. “I only took you there because I thought you might like to see it. Not as a student—as a tourist. So when you went home you could tell your friends that you saw the famous Dresden Green Diamond. This was not meant to scare you.” Now they were both laughing.

  Winter came and went, with spring appearing and everything coming back to itself. The air was cool and sweet. Cymbeline was still on her own much of the time, except when she was with Julius Weisz. It wasn’t difficult to see how they formed the friendship that began with taking photo journeys around Dresden, with Julius as tour guide. They would meet somewhere—a garden, a church, a palace, a neighborhood, a platz, a riverside—she with her five-by-seven camera and extra dry plates in her small black leather suitcase, and he with his Kodak roll-film camera.

  Eventually the time spent together lengthened, and they would linger over coffee and a pastry. On other days, they would dine together at lunch, occasionally dinner. They talked about photography, and chemistry. Cymbeline explained her experiments that had led to a paper that spring called “About the Direct Development of Platinum Paper for Brown Tones.” They talked about the use of color, of how to use a romantic blur without being sentimental—“I abhor sentimentality,” she told him. They found more aerial photos, pictures taken from tethered hot-air balloons, kites, even small rockets. Maybe it was the fact of Cymbeline’s time in Dresden drawing to a close that edged their many conversations into more personal topics.

  “Cymbeline, Cymbeline,” Julius said, “is that a common name for American girls?”

  “My father has some interesting ideas about women, like giving them men’s names. He once made us live in a spiritual commune on the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington.”

  “A spiritual commune? Like a place of ghosts?”

  “No, but he believes in those too.”

  “I would like to meet this father of yours.”

  Then there were times when Cymbeline felt they were speaking in code; she would offer an opinion, say, about the recent hunger strikes of the jailed militant British suffragettes, and the increasing violence toward women, and Julius’s ambiguous response about being “allowed to be who you are” would leave her to wonder what, exactly, they were talking about. It was similar to when her family members would have loud, lively and slightly aggressive political discussions that seemed to have little to do with politics and everything to do with the friction between certain family members. All those unresolved disagreements that cannot be addressed directly lest the confrontation cause permanent damage, the unkind words and frustrations laid bare. Much better to dress it up in something like politics.

  Her confusion was that Julius sought her out, seeming to enjoy her company, but in what way she wasn’t entirely sure. There were times when she felt nothing but the warmth of friendship and professional camaraderie. It was the other times that threw her, when she was aware of a spark much like the little flash from the day they ran into each other at The Procession of Princes. Most likely she was simply one more temporary student-friend in a long line of temporary student-friends. It seemed so unsurprising, that students and professors sharing the same interests would share a friendship. Then the students grew up, moved on, or went home (like Cymbeline) while Julius remained in place. And maybe he was a little lonely too?

  Cymbeline also noticed him “giving her the once-over twice,” as her sister Ruby would say. Cymbeline was shy around men; she was not shy around Julius.

  Then there were the times when he seemed to disappear outside of class and she wouldn’t see him for days. And other times when he was with her—yet not with her—and she knew enough not to ask where he was when his attention was so clearly elsewhere.

  She told herself it was a German thing, something cultural that she didn’t understand. She told herself that she didn’t ask because she didn’t want to be rude, when, in truth, she didn’t want to know. It had occurred to her that he might be married; no one wants to be in love with a married man. There. She admitted it. She was in love with Julius Weisz.

  Berlin, 1910

  The trip to Berlin came about because Julius told her, “You really should see Berlin before you leave.” Though she very much wanted to visit Berlin, if for no other reason than that it was the city of Alfred Stieglitz, she demurred. “What would be your hesitation?” he asked.

  Going away with you, she wanted to say, because I have no idea what it means to go away with you. Instead she said, “I’m not sure I have the money for it.”

  They would take the train, he said, spend the day and return that evening. “You will be my guest,” he said. “Cymbeline, you have never seen anything like Berlin. It’s one of those cities that can’t be mistaken for someplace else.”

  So this is how Cymbeline ended up disembarking from a train at the Anhalter Bahnhof, a vast cathedral of a train station flooded with light and possessing four separate waiting rooms, including one used exclusively by the Hohenzollerns. They stepped out of the station and into a crazy intersection of five converging boulevards (“Potsdamer Platz,” said Julius). The sheer volume of pedestrians, trolleys, horse-drawn carts, bicycles, pushcarts, motorcars, and carriages was exhilarating. There were newsboys and flower sellers. Tram bells and horses’ hooves and car horns. There were men in elaborat
e uniforms escorting elegant women. It was a jolt: the noise, the smells, the buying and selling and rushing and strolling and conversing and meeting and parting amid all the enormous buildings housing offices, stores and shops, cafés, theaters, and packed restaurants, spilling people into the streets. It was the thrill of being in the congested center of such a metropolitan city, populated by shopgirls, workmen, noblemen with their formal manners and air of entitlement; students, local and foreign. Scientists, artists, musicians. Poets. Factory owners, department store owners, bankers, and purveyors of fine goods. People passing through, people without the means to move on.

  On this unseasonably warm spring day, Cymbeline knew happiness. And when Julius took her arm, she thought, Yes, this is where I was always meant to be.

  “I thought we would wander and see what we find,” said Julius, as they threaded through the throng, passing a rather garish and massive establishment claiming an entire street corner, its name emblazoned across the facade.

  “Piccadilly?” asked Cymbeline, coming to a stop.

  Julius tried to pull her away.

  “Let’s go to the Tiergarten,” he said. The Tiergarten was Berlin’s wildly lush city park.

  But she wouldn’t budge, watching patrons come and go from the Piccadilly. “It isn’t as if we have to be somewhere,” she said.

  “You won’t like it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It isn’t what you expect.”

  “Now you’ve just convinced me.”

  “Well, then, if you insist,” said Julius, reluctantly escorting her toward the door. He stopped her from entering by placing his hands on her shoulders. “Yes,” he said as they stood face-to-face, “you really should see all that Berlin has to offer.”