The Green Muse Read Online Free PDF Page A

master did, to give the grieving a truth they could hold in their hands, a picture that would bring the loved person to them whole and palpable every time they looked at it, for years to come, for the rest of their lives.
    So I learned to love death, because an artist cannot photograph any subject without real love and respect.
    After some years with M. Bousson, it was M. Martillon, after all, who gave me the opportunity to go to Paris. There was an opening, he told me, at a tintype studio near the Tuilleries. I would be only one of many young men, but Paris was full of opportunities, and full, to my young mind, of possible dreams. I ended up one of a cadre of young men whose job it was to develop the seemingly endless series of photographs taken at the studio, mostly portraits of families, young men and women on the Grand Tour, and old generals. It was tedious work, but it made my hands careful, fast, and sure. But I found that I had learned more of human nature photographing the dead and dying than I ever would from the stiff and formal photographs taken at the studio. At least all the expressions of death are natural ones, and the expressions of the dying are true and clear. But these ­people, young and old, tourists or girls making their first debut, stood as frightened and frozen in front of the camera as ­people did fifty years ago, when they had to stand immobile fifteen minutes for the creation of a daguerreotype.
    Although a single photograph took only a matter of seconds to shoot, each person looked somehow almost identical. Whether the subject stood or sat in front of the most lifelike setting of trees or waterfall, only rarely did the spark of individuality light the eyes. It is intimidating to most ­people to have their picture taken. I have read that the savages in Africa fear that the camera, in taking their pictures, will steal away a part of their soul, and it seems that there is some vestigial fear of such a thing even in civilized societies! The vast majority of subjects stare at the camera lens with a blankness more blank than death’s.
    But I can still remember one young girl because of her insistence on the breaking of this pattern. From the back room where I sat with a dozen other young men churning out portraits, I suddenly heard cries emanating from the studio proper: Renée, Renée, you must sit quietly! Renée, Renée, that is not an expression proper to a young lady! And I knew Renée when I saw her. She sat defiant on a papier-­mâché rock next to a painted stream, her head tilted back, her eyes bold. This is a girl made for adventure, I thought, and I think of her still. She was not beautiful, but her eyes held such promise, such passion, such will often I have wished Renée well, when passing a midinette or other young thing on the street. Often I have wondered for what adventures Renée was fated, even where she is now. For a week I was half in love with her, I think. And perhaps I will always think of her now and again. Linked as we are by glass and image, perhaps I will always wonder, and wish her well. And that is the very magic of photography, that we can look, and wonder, and care, long after the documented moment has passed.
    After perhaps six months of toil at the studio, I was moved into the front room to begin photographing subjects myself, a blessing not unmixed, as I had often to reject my natural urge to prod my subjects into life. It was not my business to do more than arrange the subject in proper relationship to whatever background was chosen; mine was not the pleasure of a Nadar. No Sarah Bernhardt lithe and lively even in stillness, no great advancements to my art. But I found satisfaction in the almost abject gratitude of my subjects, as though each time I clicked the button I had performed some complex and quite amazing feat of magic.
    After another six months I was granted the great good fortune to photograph for the newspapers one of the