Eight Girls Taking Pictures Read online

  “It’s settled then!” Miss Charles said, facing Amadora (now torn between giving her attention to the dog or to the photographer), and slapped her hands down on the arms of her chair. The dog danced out of the room. “My fee is thirty guineas, covering your three-year tuition, paying you back at a wage of five shillings the first year, doubling in the second, and tripling in the third. We start at nine every morning.”

  Amadora liked the novelty of work. The first year she learned how to load dark slides, prepare, then rock the exposed glass plates in chemical baths, and how to book and interview clients; she learned about people as much as about portrait making. She also learned about money and society.

  Being a modern working girl in 1912 made her feel that she was becoming the sort of woman the suffragette movement was all about; in this way she felt she was making good on her promise to fight the good fight, only from a different perspective.

  On the other hand, she also became much closer to Chang, since it was her job to walk him every day in the nearby park. When he promenaded in front of her on his lead, she was sure she looked like a lady of leisure. This made her want to tell passersby that the picture they presented, lady and dog, was inaccurate. She wanted to say, I’m actually a photographer—except that she wasn’t, not yet, even if her fingers were stained from chemicals—which made her more impatient when she spent time with Chang.

  One day when she was in the park, trying to soothe the fractious Chang, she stepped into yet another dog mess, an ongoing hazard of dealing with the Pomeranian. As she looked around for a way to clean her shoe, while wrestling with Chang’s leash, her long skirt, and the soiled shoe, she overheard a male voice say, “What sort of person dresses her dog in pearls anyway?”

  And another male voice answered, “The pretentious sort.”

  She glanced over to see two men, not much older than she, seated side by side on a bench. It was obvious they were unaware of their carried voices.

  “She looks like she bosses him around, and he looks as though he likes it,” said one of the men, who, Amadora saw, was handsome in a kind of cold, unstudied, and therefore probably completely orchestrated way. At first, she thought he was referring to Chang, until she followed their eyes to see the object of the comment—a nicely dressed couple strolling in the park. She had to admit, the woman did look a bit stern and appeared to be pulling her smaller husband along, with her hand resting on the inside of his arm, and he did look a bit cowed.

  The handsome man’s friend, also nice looking but not as arresting, said in an affected accent, “Why yes, I am Fabian Socialist!” Amadora looked in another direction to see an obviously well-to-do man being trailed by what seemed to be a manservant of some sort while the well-to-do man was trying to impress a very pretty woman dressed in the style of a Pre-Raphaelite bohemian muse, or model.

  As Amadora began laughing, having caught on to the men’s game, she saw that the handsome man realized she had heard everything they said. Instead of looking apologetic, he offered the most minimal of acknowledgments by giving a little wave, his arm draped across the back of the bench, as if he couldn’t be bothered.

  While a little dog wearing pearls wasn’t her idea, she could see the humor in it. She could also see an arrogance in the handsome man that was absent in his friend, who, once he knew she had heard everything, seemed noticeably embarrassed.

  • • •

  One day, feeling slightly oppressed by all the pink, as monochromatic as the use of no color in Amadora’s opinion, she asked Miss Charles if it were completely possible, would she choose to do color portraits? Lallie Charles looked at Amadora as if she had suggested that Chang were merely a dog and answered, “No reputable portrait artist would take color pictures.”

  “Why not? If it were possible?”

  “It isn’t done,” said Miss Charles.

  “Why isn’t it done?” Amadora insisted.

  “No one would want it.”

  “What if someone wanted a color portrait?” asked Amadora. “Shouldn’t she have what she wants?”

  Miss Charles said, “Either you are serious about this work or you are not, Miss Allesbury.”

  “My father manufactures colored ink. He would have no clients if people didn’t want color.”

  “But they don’t want it.”

  “Why don’t they want it?”

  “Because it isn’t beautiful. It is too much like life,” said Miss Charles, punctuating the end of their conversation by handing Amadora Chang’s leash.

  • • •

  It was called The Works, and it was where Amadora asked Lallie Charles to send her after a year spent arranging pink silk roses, pink silk draperies, pink velvet chairs. By this time Miss Charles had three other assistants doing what Amadora was doing, with the exception of walking Chang, who behaved as if Amadora belonged to him. The Works was the place where Miss Charles sent her negatives to be “improved”; Amadora made her case not just that she wanted to expand her photographic education but that Miss Charles would benefit from her new skills when she returned to complete the third year of her apprenticeship.

  Lallie Charles was always a soft touch.

  • • •

  Amadora explained to her parents one evening, her father rapt, her mother less so:

  “It’s called The Works, and you can all but invent people. A retoucher rids the sitter of all manner of physical imperfection: jowls, thick ankles, unfortunate jaws, and midsections. Bodies become svelte and young again. Then the retoucher—which will now be me—applies a liquid known as ‘medium,’ picks up a pencil, and all wrinkles, lines, and other blemishes disappear!”

  “Perhaps I’ll come by your ‘Works,’ ” said her father.

  “Please no,” said Amadora. “I love you as you are.”

  “I’d rather be as I was.”

  “That’s the rub, you see. One must be very skilled when erasing warts and moles and furrows or you will be as you never were. Utterly unrecognizable.”

  “Dorrie,” said her mother, “this erasing will be your new work? Won’t you tire of it?”

  “Once I master retouching, I shall be sent on to learn trimming, mounting, finishing, and spotting.”

  “Finishing?” asked her mother.

  “A sharp knife applied to the mouth can make the sitter a villian, a sensualist, or a nun. Eyes can be darkened, made expressive, given the look of someone keeping a secret, or holding back a laugh, or tears. One can resemble a poet. Anything can be made bigger or smaller, happy or thoughtful, straightened or softened. Eyelashes, eyebrows, hairlines, nose hair, chin hair.”

  “And how do you work this alchemy?” asked her father.

  “With a sharp knife, a paintbrush, watercolors, pumice powder, gum, and chalks.”

  “I’m a bit concerned about your knowing the look of a sensualist,” said her mother.

  Her father said, “This is where you want to work?”

  “Without a doubt,” answered Amadora.

  • • •

  Amadora was happier at The Works than she had ever been at Lallie Charles’s studio. There was so much to learn, so much to master, whereas the studio was just more of the same—the same society ladies, with the same ladies’ maids who helped them in and out of the same structured, intricate, corseted clothing. The same pose by the lattice window. The same pink glow.

  It wasn’t that Amadora thought less of the photographer; as theatrically eccentric as she could be, Lallie Charles was dedicated to her art, which, in turn, defined something of an era. But Amadora, not even out of her teens, was too young for nostalgia. She had all kinds of electric dreams propelling her forward. The ennui she had experienced when she returned from Paris (before her time with Miss Charles) was again upon her during her time with the photographer.

  Even more disturbingly, before she left Lallie Charles’s studio, Amadora sometimes searched for the haughty, handsome young man from the park. She worked for a woman, worked with three other female assist
ants much like herself, and the clients, with their maids, were nearly all women. No wonder, she said to herself, that I should be thinking about a man like that. He wasn’t even nice.

  • • •

  “Girls,” said Lallie Charles to Amadora and the three other assistants, “changes afoot!”

  The four young women held their breath as they sat, side by side, on the parlor sofa. Business had been decidedly off for the past several months. No one knew if it was due to a decline in Lallie Charles’s popularity or an increase in the interest in amateur photography, made simple by the Kodak roll-film cameras; or maybe it was the spate of complaints about the portraits themselves, which were prone to fading. Sitters would return unhappy about the quality of their photographs, asking her to retake the pictures.

  “Il faut cultiver notre jardin, kittens, so we are relocating—home, studio, everything!—to a fabulous house, la maison la plus exquise just down the street. It will make all the difference!”

  But the only difference it made was that Miss Charles went bankrupt.

  Before the court determination of her insolvency, Miss Charles ordered a resisting Amadora back from her job at The Works (“Chang needs you,” she said, clearly believing that Amadora should feel flattered); she undertook extensive renovations on her new house and studio, then gave an elegant, expensive opening, which was almost entirely unattended.

  It was at this event that the cold, handsome young man from the park, all those months ago, arrived. Amadora was standing toward the back of the room, charged with keeping an eye on Chang, when she looked up to see the young man. She watched as he walked into the largely empty room, a puzzled expression as his eyes swept the space until they rested on Amadora. She was almost tempted to wave to him, as if he were an old friend.

  “Excuse me,” he said when he reached her, “am I early or am I late?”

  “Neither, I’m afraid,” said Amadora.

  “Naturally,” he muttered, mostly to himself as he walked away, “why should I ever rate a decent assignment?”

  She had begun to follow when he ran into someone he knew.

  “Clifton!” called the second man, who seemed relieved to have run into a familiar face, “what the devil are you doing here?”

  “Being punished,” the young man answered. While he didn’t raise his voice for all to hear, he didn’t take pains to lower it either. “This place is like death.”

  “Poor old girl,” said the friend, tipping his head toward Lallie Charles, who was genuinely charming the few people in her circle. Of course, Amadora was grateful to Miss Charles for all she’d done for her—the studio work and her experience at The Works. But it was more than that; it was having the chance to work for a woman who was making her own way in the world, to observe how she ran her business, how she dealt with her high-society clientele (always with grace and patience), and learning the business of the studio in the process. Art was Amadora’s desire, but business was the way to achieve it. Amadora admired Lallie Charles, despite the photographer’s repetitive approach to her work and her resistance to changing or pushing herself as an artist.

  Lallie Charles took nothing for granted. Underneath all the pink, romantic glow was a woman as tough as any suffragette. Though Amadora was naturally inclined toward a kind of flirtatious charm, something more playful, hiding her truest self, her artist self, behind her quick sense of humor, none of this was so different from Lallie Charles using her sophistication and culture when dealing with people. Women, Amadora knew, were not admired when they showed how much they cared about their careers; no one wanted to see what it took to do everything yourself. Everyone preferred the illusion of effortless ease, and in some ways this was the most important lesson Amadora learned from Lallie Charles.

  So it infuriated Amadora to hear the older man refer to the photographer as “poor old girl.” She wanted to confront the speaker, asking what he had accomplished that placed him in a position to condescend to this woman. She had decided to say something—not that Miss Charles would approve of such an outburst, something that Amadora knew from months of observation—when she heard the handsome young man say, “How can I be expected to write anything for the paper when there isn’t a single person here who seems even remotely interesting?”

  At that moment, the young man turned to see Amadora, almost by his side, remembering her from when he’d first arrived.

  “Pardon,” he said, “I’m writing a piece for The Guardian on Miss Charles’s studio change. I’m wondering if you can direct me to someone who may work for Miss Charles.” With that, he handed his empty glass to Amadora, thinking her the help, and she accepted it because she wasn’t quite sure what else to do. “Apologies,” he said, noting the look on her face. “I mean someone who works for Miss Charles in a professional capacity.”

  “That would be me,” said Amadora.

  Now it was the young man’s turn to look confused. “Oh, dear,” he said. “Sorry.” He took his glass back. “I didn’t realize.”

  “Why would you when you came in and decided who everyone was without even speaking to them? How would you know the difference between a serving girl and a photographer? But, then, I know what a burden it must be to be the smartest, most captivating person in the room.” Amadora snatched the glass back from the young man and made her way to the kitchen.

  “Please,” he said, following closely behind. “Allow me an honest mistake and to apologize once again. I’m not usually this boorish.”

  “Yes, you are,” said Amadora. She stopped and turned so abruptly they nearly collided.

  “Pardon?”

  “I saw you—with your friend—one day in the park. I was the girl with the little dog in pearls—you know, me and my pretensions.”

  “I do seem to remember something like a dog in pearls . . . but I don’t recall you—”

  “You don’t even remember those you insult? Well, if I’m not mistaken, that’s even more insulting.”

  “I—” He took a deep breath, then shut his mouth.

  As they stood in the kitchen, Amadora could see from the way he held his body and his struggle to say the right thing that his awkwardness was a result of trying not to compound his gaffes. His confusion at attempting to remember her was sincere. It crossed her mind that his proud, difficult demeanor masked a social discomfort, that is, she thought she could detect his decency despite everything.

  She burst out laughing.

  “Oh, God, it is more insulting, isn’t it?” he said, laughing along. “It seems my pomposity knows no bounds. Look, may we begin again? Would you like to join me for supper tonight? You can tell me all about dogs in pearls and Miss Charles.” He offered his hand. “George Clifton.”

  “Amadora Allesbury.”

  “Amadora.”

  “George.”

  “Like a cheerful young rat deserting, I departed, but I felt sorrow, regret, and love for the sinking ship.” This is what Amadora said to George as she gave him the cut-rate tour of her modest Victoria Street studio. “I actually left just before Miss Charles’s studio closed, and have not yet quite come to terms with my departure, inevitable though it was to be.”

  He walked around, taking in the camera with the Dallmeyer portrait lens (all brass and glass), lamps, chemicals, developing trays, and fixing tanks. Hypo tanks large enough for twelve-by-fifteen plates took up floor space. There was a old stove and ratty curtains and a darkroom with the dimensions of a phone booth. There were bottles of liquid, a dry-mounting machine, a desk, and a pink velvet sofa as a prop, along with a brass floor lamp, its shade made of opalescent glass sculpted to resemble fish scales.

  He stopped at the sofa. “I see you’ve decided to continue on with the decorating theme of pink.”

  “It was left over from the previous owner—a photographer. I bought everything.”

  “You did well under Miss Charles.”

  “My father,” she said as financial shorthand. Though Amadora had done a pair of pictures at M
iss Charles’s, she had knowledge in lieu of practical experience, and the sort of confidence that is really only possible in a twenty-one-year-old girl who has not yet known failure. It was this fearlessness that convinced her father to stake his daughter in the winter of 1914, when she was the youngest female photographer in London.

  “How long have you been here?” asked George Clifton, making himself at home on the pink sofa, unaware that his position was almost identical to the one on the park bench the first time he had waved to Amadora.

  “Since the week after we went to supper. Three months, four days, and two hours,” she said, “if I were keeping track.”

  “I wasn’t aware that you thought enough of our supper to keep track,” he said, his body losing the relaxed, expansive pose as it closed in on itself.

  “You would’ve known if you’d rung me.”

  George got up and crossed over to a number of black-and-white photographs hung from a thin rope, like laundry. She could see the awkwardness again, the discomfort. He said, “You’ve been busy.”

  “Not yet,” she said, standing beside him. “I have to appear as if I have clients in order to attract clients.”

  “Who’s this?” George pointed to a portrait of a girl, maybe sixteen, posing with a large, long-haired dog wearing a wreath of hand-tinted flowers.

  “That’s Violette. My sister.”

  “And this?” He pointed to a picture of a young woman in a sparkling ball gown, her hair done up in an elaborate style.

  “That would be Violette.”

  “Hmm. Quite different,” he said, comparing the two photographs.

  “That’s the point,” said Amadora.

  It was then he stared harder at the remaining pictures, all of young women or girls, hair down or pinned back; in casual clothes, formal clothes, even a beautiful robe; one sat primly on the pink velvet sofa, another played with a parrot, while another clasped a rose in her mouth, or held a glass orb, or rested a hand on a large library globe. They were smiling, thoughtful, serious, laughing. “Violette?” he said.