Chapter Text
"...the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment.."
― Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time.
"The realists, of whom I am one ... do not take the photograph for a 'copy' of reality, but for an emanation of past reality: a magic, not an art. "
― Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida .
PART ONE.
One.
As usual, I kept quiet.
Farah liked to host, more than any of us; she considered herself a tastemaker, in that she liked to think she influenced the people around her, bringing out unusual food or playing music that nobody had heard but was meant to capture our fascination. And inevitably someone would have heard it before, and then I could see in Farah's eyes that she was intensely disappointed.
Occasionally an outsider was present, some friend of a friend she had procured for the night, for all of our entertainment. I liked when this happened. It threw a new dynamic into the mix; people spoke and acted differently, trying to present a more curated version of themselves in the presence of a complete stranger. It also meant that my camera lens was no longer the only objective eye in the room. Candid shots became easier.
This was mid-autumn, just after the clocks had gone back, and the room seemed especially dim. When natural light faded, it took us a little longer to realise the lamps would need switching on at seven, not eight. It was smoky, too, with two or three joints being passed around. I perched on a fluffy footstool, my head leaning against the mantelpiece beside an old electric heater in place of a real fire.
Farah held court at one end of the sofa, clutching Eoin’s elbow intermittently whenever she shrieked with laughter or shock, which was often, whilst he gazed soppily at her. It was common knowledge that Eoin was devoted to Farah, who treated him like a lapdog more than a close friend. I used to wonder if it might be kinder for someone to tell him she’d never fuck him, but I never had the heart, and he had a contact for very good, very pure coke, so nobody else wanted to cut him out either. In the armchair adjacent to Farah sat Stefan, and on Stefan’s lap, sat Molly, my favourite person in the room. She caught my eye from across the room and raised a pale eyebrow laconically, which I felt duty-bound to capture with my lens.
Frankie sat beside the newcomer on the sofa opposite, and they might have matched, if Frankie’s curls were less ginger and if he were less outrageously camp. Although he hardly radiated machismo; one leg was crossed elegantly over the other, and his restless hands rotated a lighter from palm to palm, the nails painted unevenly. Another quartet lined the living room, but I didn’t know them so well - just an ex of Frankie’s who he seemed to be on good terms with, and some old UAL friends of Farah’s.
‘Alma?’ Eoin waved a joint in my direction, ash floating down onto the shag pile carpet. I took it from him, inhaled gingerly and held the breath for a couple of seconds before letting it out again, the smoke pluming in front of my face. It was strong, and after passing it along, I paused and stared into the middle distance until the initial light-headedness subsided. I was halfway through my first roll of film, but it was colour, and the next was black and white, so I snapped away quite freely, keen to capture the best part of the night in monochrome.
My gaze flitted from face to face, observing which ones were the most animated, or the most poised. I got to my feet soundlessly; everybody there was used to my roving, except the newcomer, who glanced sidelong at me for a moment as though he had just remembered my presence. He was quickly drawn back to the conversation at hand though, which was just what I wanted. What I needed , really, was to be invisible to everyone, past a certain point - to be merely a fly on the wall. I thought that, if my gaze was perfectly unobtrusive, my images would capture only the truth of their interactions and not their involuntary response to the camera. Of course, this was a naive ambition.
Farah gesticulated animatedly to punctuate an anecdote from her recent trip to visit her parents in Toulouse, her hand movements tracked obsessively by Eoin. Frankie said something droll, making the newcomer throw his head back and laugh. Molly leaned back, her eyelids drooping slightly from the heavy atmosphere, and Stefan mumbled something indiscernible in her ear - captured. All of this, I saw through my camera, pausing only occasionally to judge the light before bringing it up to my eye again.
Generally speaking, the topic of a conversation was of far less interest to me than the way it made people act and interact. Frankie buzzed away about some video shoot he was working on, and the newcomer reacted with sudden enthusiasm when they realised they had a mutual friend, his face becoming more animated and his knees knocking together as he twisted slightly in his seat. Making sure my flash was off, I took about three or four shots surreptitiously, and paused just as someone flicked the hall light on. His profile was semi-silhouetted for a few moments, delicate and almost feminine. Nothing about him was severe exactly, and anyone else’s features might have seemed unremarkable as a result. But the man was expressive enough that he actually appeared quite pretty. It also helped that he was crowned with a head of curls so dark they appeared black in the low light. He could have played a Reid brother in a Jesus and Mary Chain biopic.
I pressed the shutter twice more, slinking away before he noticed my scrutiny. Farah chose well; he was highly photogenic. I wondered what he did. Frankie tried to engage him on the subject of a documentary he was editing, but from what I overheard, that didn’t seem to be his speciality. I made a mental note to ask Farah later. Her kitchen was distressingly untidy, but not completely unhygienic; the washing up was only recently done, glasses and plates were stacked haphazardly at various stages of drying. The cold lights made me blink a few times as my eyes adjusted, and I opened the fridge door, ready to ransack the shelves for the fancy sort of deli bits she often bought from the Wholefoods round the corner, on Parkway.
‘Al! There you are.’ Molly’s voice startled me, and I slammed the fridge shut, making the jars and bottles jangle together alarmingly. She leaned across the surface of the island, sticking her finger in a pot of hummus and licking it off. ‘Mind if I drop your name to my editor?’
‘What for?’ I removed the camera strap from around my neck, where its weight was beginning to create an ache. ‘I probably won’t say no though.’
‘She was complaining the other day about the gallery pieces we’ve been doing. Says the photographers are all glorified Martin Parr wannabes. I think your work would impress her.’ A smirk played on her lips. We both knew this comparison was a common critique from my first year of art school, one I tried desperately to get away from for the next three.
‘Yeah, go on then, drop my name. We’ll see what comes of it.’
‘What’ve you been taking this evening?’ She pulled the camera across the countertop by its leather strap, her face falling upon seeing the plain, flat surface beneath the viewfinder. ‘Oh, no digitals? I quite fancy posting something.’
‘Sorry, film only tonight. I can still whip out my phone though. Want to recline across the counter?’
‘No thanks. Stefan might get jealous.’
‘Go and sit on his lap again, and I’ll take something classy you can frame for his birthday.’
Bribing my friends with good photos worked frequently. Image was currency, and nobody could turn down a flattering, stylishly lit photograph taken with a professional eye. Fortunately for me, it had translated into literal currency too. Sometimes I almost felt guilty knowing how many other young, talented photographers had studied and hustled and networked only to give up and take a dull office job. Almost . I knew that I was good. I knew I deserved the fee I commanded, and the apartment it had finally paid for. But success is a spectrum, and I was still ambitious.
I followed Molly out of the kitchen, hovering in the doorway to the living room again as she sauntered back to Stefan’s lap. Farah reclined halfway across Eoin’s shoulder, who looked like he might faint from joy, though she still faced away from him and snapped her fingers in emphasis at some raucous joke she was enjoying with Frankie’s ex. My gaze travelled back to the newcomer, magnetically. All I could see was the back of his head, and the curls that bounced a little every time he moved. He was rather twitchy.
‘Still… stay still,’ I muttered to myself, looping the camera strap back over my neck and lifting the viewfinder. His voice became clearer, a stopping-and-starting line of conversation that everyone craned to hear.
‘The thing is, I didn’t even study at a higher level, you know? I got, like, three GCSEs. But if people keep asking you - no, begging you to write properly, it’s hard to say no. But who am I to stake a claim in that art form? I don’t know, does it change depending on the form, or the audience? The scale of it? I’m sure you,’ - he gestured towards Frankie - ‘have an opinion on the whole thing.’
‘Ha!’ Frankie snorted. ‘Formal education is overrated. Get that paper, you know? Everyone and their mum is picking up their phone and making art. But I’m not concerned , fuck that. Nobody’s treading on my toes.’
‘That’s because Frankie believes his work belongs at Frieze,’ Molly cut in.
‘Girl, I never said explicitly, but who am I to correct you…’
‘There’s no distinction between high and low culture any more, is there? Like there’s still the two extremes, but the line is so blurred,’ the newcomer wondered, accepting another joint passed along from Stefan.
‘And they both copy each other anyway. It’s so satisfying when something independently made, with so few expectations, really hits big. Like an underdog,’ Molly said.
Farah made a tsk sound. ‘But the arts are still so dominated by people who had the means and the mentorship to submit a fucking bomb portfolio to CSM or the Slade.’
‘Well, what do you suggest?’ Stefan raised his eyebrows.
‘I’m not a politician, mate. If I had all the answers, do you think I’d be running around doing Julia’s bidding?’
‘Who?’ The newcomer frowned.
‘Julia Mellors. You know?’
‘Oh… yeah. Saw an article recently -’
‘That’ll be the Dazed one, I almost tore my hair out at the shoot. She had to have a specific brand of sparkling water. I could have murdered her.’
With an empty, whirring sound, my camera complained and announced the film was all used up. A couple of eyes swivelled in my direction, piercing me where I crouched, just behind Eoin’s shoulder.
‘Don’t mind me,’ I mumbled. Eyes swivelled back. But the newcomer’s stayed trained on me for a few seconds longer, and I stared right back. He didn’t smile exactly, but his face softened into something resembling a smirk, perhaps a little warmer. Faint recognition - not of me personally, but of my purpose, my place. I wondered what he was thinking, and if he respected what I was doing. Some people were funny about it - Farah would have told him beforehand that I was taking photographs, since some people were notable enough to be concerned about the way their image was used. Was he notable? To me, maybe. But objectively? There was something familiar about him. But then, I’d photographed so many faces that a solid seventy-five percent of them blurred into a singular amorphous mass.
Although I was done shooting for the evening, I wasn’t any more likely to join in the conversation, besides the occasional agreement, if a subject required concurrence. The smoke made my head heavy; I was loathe to fall asleep at one of Farah’s parties and miss anything juicy. I’d quit coke six months previously. I was going to need a strong coffee.
***
The machine gurgled alarmingly, competing with the deafening clatter of the rain on the slanted roof above my head. I zoned out, watching the coffee fall into my mug in two black, steaming lines. A dull ache pulsed behind my temples.
I hadn’t bothered setting myself an alarm, instead letting my body recoup lost energy and sleeping in until midday, though the light that filtered through the large windows was weak and grey. The traffic hummed on the main road, muffled by the thick walls of the flat, and I was slumped at the kitchen table with the half-full mug, gazing out at the back patio where puddles were starting to form. Living alone was a luxury still not lost on me; only three years before I shared a place with four others in Walthamstow. Although it had a mould problem and a dodgy boiler, I had fond memories of that house - it had an enormous basement that nobody else used, so I used to shoot there. I shot on film less and less after art school, once I was able to manipulate my equipment and software properly, but now I could afford the processing costs, the appeal had begun to return. A couple of commissions just after I graduated became a steady trickle, which became a series of campaigns by the time I was twenty-four, and a reliable reputation for unfussy, naturalistic editorials by twenty-six. Like I said - I was one of the lucky ones, booked and busy. A zero-point-one-percenter.
I picked up my laptop from the other end of the table, and carried it over to the sofa, tapping the trackpad lightly to wake it up. True to her word, Molly really was keen to push my work under her editor’s nose, plus it must have been a slow news day, because I already had an email from Vice in my inbox, beneath a slew of others. They were asking tentatively for a selection of unpublished work - something along the lines of my outtakes and recent personal shots, outside of commissions.
My camera still sat where I left it last night, the case nestled between the cushions of the sofa. I lifted it out and flipped the film door open, extracting the finished roll and slotting it into a canister for safe-keeping, which I reflexively tossed back and forth in my hands as I re-read the email. A seed of curiosity grew at the back of my mind. The images I captured last night seemed so promising in the viewfinder and in my memory - not that I would know for sure until I got them back from the lab. I got dressed lazily, writing my response to Molly’s editor in my head. Flattered to be asked - in the process of curating - sending over images ASAP. And an hour later I gave in to curiosity, gathered up a couple more canisters that had been waiting in the wings for their moment, threw them in my bag and left the flat.
The lab I used was far from a big-time, professional joint; it was just Phil, one of my old tutors from university. He had a ramshackle enterprise working from his garage with several very noisy machines and a powerful chemical smell that he expunged from the room with a series of even noisier ventilation grilles and fans. I should mention that Phil also acted as my agent in an informal capacity, and used his network of gallerists, art directors, documentarians and the like to book me the most credible jobs in my portfolio, whilst I navigated the commercial side.
I stuck to a route along Regent’s Canal, taking me westward from Cambridge Heath towards Essex Road. It was a frozen, soggy winter morning, and now that the rain had petered out, a fine mist hovered inches above the canal water; a couple of dog walkers and cyclists passed me by, eyes resolutely turned away to avoid contact. It irritated my mother when she visited, thinking that everyone in London was too stuck up to exchange niceties, but I enjoyed the anonymity. I didn’t envy any of the people I’d photographed, except perhaps their divine wardrobes. Another perk to my improbable success - my face sparked no recognition, and my name provided just enough for a small ego boost when I checked into a hotel. But that was all.
As a teenager I took rolls of film to the photo shop every weekend, when I was still taking clumsy snapshots of my friend Ruth. We would ride the train to Great Yarmouth, buy ice-creams and meet her older sister Emma at the end of her shift at the aquarium, hitching a ride home in her car. The sunsets over the Broads were spectacular, and often we pulled over to sit beside the sluggish water, watching cows slowly make their way across sodden farmland. I became such a regular at the shop in Norwich that they gave me a very unofficial ‘loyalty’ rate, as I spent any cash I had on developing pictures. Ruth cross-legged on the bonnet of Emma’s car; the two girls caught mid-sibling-argument on the promenade; the time we dragged a couple of boys we fancied along for the ride. And while I waited to see my creations come to life, I snuck past the bored, underpaid steward at the Empire to watch whatever was showing on a Saturday afternoon. Sometimes it would be a blockbuster, or a dull action sequel, but occasionally I caught reruns of eighties and nineties arthouse films, exposing me to a whole other way of seeing the world through a 4:3 ratio. Either way, two hours usually did the job.
Phil was faster than the old photo shop, and even after a coffee and the obligatory small talk, it took less than an hour. Though it was barely midday by the time I got home, the afternoon light was oppressive and dim. From the sofa, I could see my face reflected back at me in the glass patio door, lit up in the glow of my laptop as I watched the frames fill up the new folder. The moment of truth, then.
The first few shots were of Farah, the gentle light reflecting off her gold jewellery just as I envisioned. This was the colour roll. Normally I flicked through them slowly before pulling aside the ones I might edit, but out of impatience and curiosity, I scrolled to the other end, seeking out a particular silhouette, outlined in monochrome. The Ilford stock had a pleasant grain to it and low contrast that evoked the hazy unreality of the evening, the fact that we were all pretty stoned. And there he was, his curls glossy and defined by the dramatic shadows cast across his features. God, his profile was perfect - so classical, like a cherub. He was blessed.
I badly wanted to use these photos. Almost all of the ones with him in, anyway, and maybe a few of Molly looking ethereal, a fairy-like creature perched on Stefan’s knee, his face stony as usual. But my new subject (that was how I thought of him, then) was radiant, his dark clothes and pale face favoured by the monochrome film. I’d found myself face to face with models on shoots who were intimidatingly beautiful - you didn’t want to get too close, sensing the danger involved. It made my personal rule easier to abide by; if I fancied the subject, I never blamed myself, but the photographer relationship was to go no further than pleasantries, casual friendship at most. They were out of bounds, particularly the boys, because they were generally worse at understanding where the line was drawn. As the old edict went, don’t shit where you eat .
This boy wasn’t without flaws - he wasn’t terrifyingly sculpted or inhumanly graceful - but he was just so lovely to look at. Out of vanity, I wanted these to be published. They demonstrated my skill as well as any other work to date.
out of curiosity, who was the new guy at yours last night? I texted Farah. didn't catch his name but i need a contact, he's in a couple of shots i want to send to Vice.
oh, Matty? been trying to get him to come down for ages, so glad he made it at last.
you didn't know him?! you of all people??
he's escaped my radar i guess? what's he do?
it’s Matty Healy. for god’s sake, look him up.
I wasn’t surprised Farah was so piqued at my cluelessness. She seemed to think I was omniscient regarding public figures. Still, I did a perfunctory Google. He looked somehow different in two dimensions, press shots and mid-performance, and yet still the same. Part of what made him so hypnotic was his constant, twitchy movement, and not many photographers seemed to have managed to capture that essence. Not like I could , I thought to myself smugly.
And a frontman… well, clearly that face was a big draw. Generally speaking, the industry tended to put puppets on a pedestal, elevating the kind of malleable personalities that were happy to act as mouthpieces for good PR. But I clearly remembered how articulate he was, and how engaged. There had to be a catch. Maybe his music was shit? I didn't listen though, just in case it wasn't, because that would only confound me. There was always a catch.
alright... i see now. can you pass his number or email along to me?
only got his number:
Below, Farah attached the contact, and I composed a message with wince-inducing formality.
Hi Matty, apologies for messaging out of the blue. This is Alma, I was taking photos at Farah's last night. I've been asked by Vice for a few outtakes from my current work, and I was hoping to use a few of the ones that feature you. Is there an email address I can forward them to, along with a consent form?
His response was prompt, and to the point. sure they’re wicked. take this as my consent. x
That was enough for me, in writing. I was relieved, but a small part of me wished he was more keen to see the pictures for himself. Most people liked to, out of curiosity or vanity. Either way, they were usually pleased with what they saw, and I had hoped that Matty would be no exception. I wanted to know that he was pleased. Not that I knew his taste, but who on earth didn’t like to be captured looking like some mid-century intellectual-cum-Beat poet? Perhaps he was so confident (or arrogant) that he didn’t want to check.
Revised direction - I typed out a new email to Vice. Please note - new curation - narrow range, but of substantially better quality . It veered off the brief slightly, but they published niche features all the time. And I’d rather anything with my name on it had a semblance of coherence to it. What was the point of just slapping some photos online with the strapline ‘Alma Bergmann took these’?
The only other people that featured heavily in the photos were my own friends, so it only took another quick round of messages to check they were happy to publish. With a tinny ‘whoosh’ sound, like something launched into flight, the email returned to Molly’s editor, and at last the images would be out there for all to see.