~ from OCTOBER 2004 ~
The young man was rather plain. Nothing outwardly exceptional about any one of his features, save perhaps his eyes – almond-shaped, and of the deepest chestnut. His hair, raven black, was lackluster. His nose, strong in profile, broadened a bit, like his forehead. As he sat for the photographer, part of him wondered why, and part of him already knew.
He was creating him… taking the raw stuff of beauty – too thin in some spots, one ear a tad too long, a vaguely crooked half-smile – and making him into something altogether different – the summation of everything that had always been within. Was the model coming into his own before the camera, or was the photographer bringing him into being? He brought out some special otherness, a latent spark that had previously been hidden.
And the young man, in turn, allowed himself to be revealed. He let himself be molded – modeled – released. All that he had yearned to express – the nights of longing, the days of tortured silence – he brought it out for him. Laying bare his secrets, setting aside his shortcomings, he gave himself to the camera completely. For every cute boy he didn’t have the courage to smile back at, for every one-night-stand he let go without asking for a number, and for every lost chance and opportunity, he looked into the lens and searched for forgotten years. He searched for himself there too.
Subject or object, and what was the real difference? It was just a few poses after all. Captured in one way, liberated in another. The balance of power wavered, but never broke. And through the glass lens each of them continued to look.
The photographer’s eye for beauty was more evolved than others; he saw something there that other models lacked. No matter how perfectly-sculpted their bodies became, no matter how chiseled their facial features or wavy their hair, they still seemed to be missing something. Behind their eyes was blankness – beauty without being, fire without heat… an icy remoteness. This boy – flawed, unexceptional, ragged even – evinced so much more. A happiness tempered with some far-away hurt… a preciously precocious confidence felled by a nagging doubt and natural hesitancy. When he smiled it was radiant – charmingly crinkled eyes and a bashful hand before his face. Far too often he was pensive – head slightly bowed, eyes downcast, and the early lines of worry creeping across his forehead.
He let himself be seen by the camera, in a way no one had seen him before. Even in daylight romps of naked revelry, he had never revealed himself to another, not really. They looked at his body, they felt his flesh, but they never saw through to him, not to the intrinsic self he guarded so fervently. He knew that lust could breed envy, and desire could be dangerous. Pulling back and withholding was the safest course. It added unknowingly to his allure – the attention elicited even as he staved it off.
The camera under the defenses. There was safety here – in the photographer’s objective eye – a disinterested distance that cared about beauty for its own sake. The intensely personal reactions the young man inspired, and that often left him sheepish and ill at ease, were not in evidence as the photographer clicked away with infinite coolness.
Yet there was trust at work, and a certain warmth as a result of it. Between the two of them, a bond of beauty was being forged – delicate and exquisite at first – powerful and stalwart later on – and it was upon this beauty that their hopes and dreams had always rested. In that beauty there could be redemption. They both believed this. In a universe of demonic possessions, beauty was a salve – a miraculous gift from God, or whatever little goodness or purity that remained when He departed.
“Would you like a rest?” the photographer asked as he loaded another roll of film. The camera whirred and clicked, spinning the film and unfurling a new canvass.
“I’m fine,” the young man answered, more calm and peaceful than he could ever remember feeling. The art of creation did not, as it did in others, leave him breathless and animated with excitement – it was simply what he was destined to do. The photographer shared this creative calm; the work was sacred at these moments, and he honored the quiet and the stillness.
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