Picture Palace (41 page)

And there were others, pairs of people, slightly mismatched, whom I took to be photographers hand-in-hand with their subjects. That anorexic gal and her friend, whose face I recognized from a drugstore paperback—surely she aimed to be a credit line on his book jacket? This dapper little man and the wheezing old dame: it could only have been a relationship that started with a studio session (“Look straight at me, dear, and forget your hands for a minute”); the boogie-man and the blonde with her tough twinkle—it wasn't too far-fetched to imagine that they had launched their romance with a camera and for all I knew kept it airborne the same way (his brutally honest chronicling of ghetto life, her cooperation amounting to human sacrifice). The bearded lout and that girl-child; the virago and her soul-mate into, as they would say, the woman's thing. I could identify the mediocrities by their catch phrases: the prancing Minimalists, the Deeply Committed crowd, the Really Strange bunch, the Terribly Exciting ones, the Intos, the Far-outs, the Flakys.

These were cannibals' success stories. But what the hell—they were having a swell time. Photography didn't matter: they had each other. That was the whole purpose of taking pictures—it won you friends, it got you fame and fresh air. “I'm working on a new concept,” said the bearded lout, and I knew that if he hadn't been a photographer in the pay of Jack Guggenheim he'd have gotten twenty years as a sex offender for some outrage upon that girl-child's person. The work was an excuse; the idea was to involve yourself with people, which was giving photography a bad name.

My anonymity made me cynical. Perhaps I was being unfair. It was possible that they had taken pictures and developed them and, like me, at some later date, had drowned in them and known the terror of what they had done.

“He's into some very exciting things.”

“He hasn't had a show for years.”

“I consider this an event. He's a very private person.”

“He's supposed to be here somewhere.”

This “he” I kept hearing about was certainly not me. I had stopped basking. My fatigue turned complacent and then panicky. I had not introduced myself, so I was temporarily forgotten. They would be justified in thinking that I was spying on them. They might round on me and say, “At least you could have had the courtesy of telling us who you were!”

But no one in that jammed room asked.

“Isn't that him?”

More than that (“Excuse me, lady,” a man said, yanking a tray of drinks out of my reach), I noticed a distinct irritation when my glance met one of these wild-eyed talkers, as if I were a gate-crasher who had no right to listen. I could have put up with being ignored; I could not bear being strenuously shunned. I was in the way! And there was a lot of shoving when the real celebrities showed up, various people I had seen on television talk shows, mainly hideous novelists who had written frank autobiographical books about their unnatural acts.

“Mind moving?” This from one of our photographer friends with a chunk of expensive apparatus in her mitts, a motor-driven Voigtländer aimed at my earhole.

Someone famous had just entered. Who it was, I could not say. But there was movement, a prelude to stampede, people beating their elbows to get past me.

“Pardon me.”

A man's hand squeezed my shoulder. About time. I turned and smiled.

“Are you Lillian Hellman by any chance?” The man bowed to hear my reply.

“Sorry, buster. I'm her mother.”

But though I was furious for being mistaken for Lily (is there any old lady on earth who is flattered by the suggestion that she resembles another old lady?), I hoped the man would pause long enough for me to tell him who I really was. Rebuffed, he fled sideways into the mob.

Already I was sick of the party. The people had stopped talking about me and on their third or fourth drink were just whooping it up, paying no attention to the posters with my name on them.

“He's done it as a multi-media event. I'm going in as soon as they shut this wine off.”

I had no business here. This was a spectacle of the kind I had avoided for thirty years. There was no reason why anyone should have recognized my face: professionally I had no face. I was for most only a name and
Twenty-two White Horses
and celebrated for a period of blindness when I had done
Firebug
. For one person I was the Cuba pictures, for another the Pig Dinner sequence; blacks knew me as the creater of
Boogie-Men
, New Englanders for
The South Yarmouth Madonna
, Californians knew only my Hollywood work, the British were aware of my London phase but nothing more, literary people my
Faces of Fiction
, and for some camera buffs I was the young gal who had done Stieglitz with his own peepstones.

To be famous is to be fixed—a picture, a date, an event, a specific and singular effort. To be fixed is to be dead, and so fame is a version of obscurity. One appeared at one's own party only to haunt it. If Frank had been around he would have steered me into the crowd and made the usual introductions, as the custodian of my reputation. But I did not see him.

Nor did I see the show. There was still a mob at
ENTER
HERE
and it was the same bunch I had seen earlier, a bit rowdier and more drunken than before. They had found a cozy place to gather and were ignoring the exhibition—plenty of time for that when the drink ran out. The party was the thing. Yet it burned me up to think that they had come here to see each other and were not paying the blindest bit of attention to my pictures.

I wondered if I should throw a fit—wave my arms and bellow at them, maybe embarrass them with a hysterical monologue about the meaning of art; or do something shocking, make a scene that they would talk about for years afterward.

Bump
.

“I'm awfully sorry.” The jerk who had taken me for Lillian Hellman rushed away. The party was starting to repeat, to replay its earlier episodes in tipsy parody.

Several people, assuming my black dress to be a uniform, demanded drinks from me. They howled when they saw their mistake, but it inspired me. I found a tray of drinks and began to make my way through the room, handing them out and sort of curtseying and taking orders, saying “Sir” and “Madam” and “I'm doing the best I can.”

All my photographer friends who in other times would have been here—dead. The people I had photographed: Mr. Slaughter, Huxley, Eliot, Teets, R. G. Perdew, Lawrence, Marilyn, Harvey and Hornette—dead. Editors and journalists and gallery-owners—dead. Orlando and Phoebe: now I knew I had driven them into the sea. I had killed them with a picture. I deserved this contempt—the people shunning me or treating me like a waitress; I deserved worse—to be treated like a criminal bitch who had hounded my brother and sister to death. I put the tray down and lurked in the crowd like the murderess I was.

Scuffing paper underfoot I bent to pick it up, although my first thought was to leave it so that one of these partygoers would trip and break his neck. It was the catalogue, a thickish manual with my name on the front just above Frank's and a different picture (
Negro Swimming to a Raft
—but “Negro” had been changed to “Person,” making nonsense of the picture). I had refused to write the personal statement Frank had requested and had told him that I would have nothing to do with the rest of the catalogue either. I should have gone further and said that I wouldn't be at the preview party. I felt ridiculous—guilty, stupid, ashamed—having come so far on false pretenses. I belonged in jail.

I had made a virtue of being anonymous. I had abided by it; and why not? Anonymity had done for me what a lifetime of self-promotion had done for other photographers. It was too late to reveal myself, for there was a point in obscurity beyond which exposure meant only the severest humiliation. It was better to continue anonymously and finally vanish into silence. I had spent my life in shadows as dense as those that hid me at this party. I had entered this room as a stranger—I had to leave as one. If the place had not been so impossibly crowded I would have done that very thing.

Acknowledgments
, I read, opening the catalogue. There followed a list of money-machines, not only the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, but the National Endowment for the Arts and five others, including the Melvin Shohat Photographic Trust. If Frank didn't make a go of his curatorship there was always room for such a financial genius in the International Monetary Fund.

My career, spent in attacking patronage, ended with these cash-disbursing bodies footing the bill. But I had forfeited the right to object. I was dead. They were all dancing the light fantastic on my grave.

Maude Coffin Pratt
, Frank's Preface began,
is probably
one of the most distinguished American photographers of our time—

“Probably”? “One of”? “Our time”? He was pulling his punches. Quite right: I had blood on my hands.

But there was, after all, a message from me, titled
Statement from the Artist:

 

The Bible says, “In the beginning was the Word.” The Bible is in error. In the beginning was the Image. The eye knew before the mouth uttered a syllable; thought is pictorial.

 

Photographic truth, which I think of as the majestic echo of image, originated in the magic room known as the
camera obscura
. This admitted the world through a pinhole. Man learned to fix that image and photography was born with a bang. Painting never recovered from the blow. It began to belittle truth and, faking the evidence, became destructive.

 

One knows a bad picture immediately. All you can do with bad pictures is look at them. The good ones invite you to explore; the best drown you and keep you under until you think you will never return. But you do. I have had this experience myself.

 

Photography is interested solely in what is.
What am I?
you may ask. I can answer that question. You are a “Pratt.”

 

On a more personal note, I was born in 1906, in Massachusetts.

 

Frank's work, the catalogue shorthand that left my life in the dark and my crime unstated.

“There he is,” said a man next to me to his lady friend. They nearly knocked me down as they moved past me.

I got behind them and followed them across the room and saw, at the center of the largest huddle of people, the Veronica Lake hairstyle, the white fretful face, the string of beads. He wore a torn denim shirt and under it a T-shirt saying
It's Only Rock and Roll
; and bright green bell-bottoms and, I knew—though I could not see them—his platform clodhoppers. He had come a long way since the day he had turned up in a barnacle-blue three-piece suit on my Grand Island piazza. “I'd be deeply grateful if you'd allow me to examine your archives.” And I had thrown the picture palace open to him.

Edging forward, I caught some of the chatter. The people surrounding Frank were talking in low voices, trying to lend sincerity to their guff by whispering it.

“It's perfectly marvelous, Frank, every last bit of it. It's got density, it's got life, and it's just about the most exciting thing I've seen for ages.” This from a purring pin-striped heel, obviously a foundation man.

Frank said, “I couldn't have done it without your support. It was a long haul, but I think you'll find that your money's been well spent.”

“The whole committee's here to give you a good send-off.”

“It was a risk, of course, but from my point of view”—Frank made howdying haymakers with his free hand—“Hi, Tom. Hello there, Charlie. George. Norman, good to see you. Susan, glad you could make it—a risk worth taking.”

His face's fretfulness had a pinch of pride. He wore a tight little smile, as if he were sucking a cough drop. His eyes were vacant with self-love.

“It must have been quite a summer up there on the Cape.”

“Pretty unbelievable,” said the peckerhead. “But I feel we've broken new ground.”

“It's certainly a great coup for the museum.”

Frank said, “The work was crying out to be seen. She had no idea.”

“The presentation—”

“Presentation is incredibly important,” said Frank. “I knew the minute I saw the pictures that I was on to something very big and very exciting.” Saying this, he shook his head, rattling his beads, and took a tango-step forward to plant a kiss on an admiring hag.

“Frank's an amazing guy,” said a young man on my right.

“Don't I know it,” I said.

“He'll make a fortune out of this, but you've got to hand it to him.”

“Sure do.”

“Hassles? He's been getting a hand-job all summer from our friend whatsit.”

“Jack Guggenheim?”

“No, um, the one who took the pictures. Pratt.”

“Don't be silly,” I said. “Frank's the one who took the pictures.”

“Yeah.”

The party had thinned out. The remaining people gravitated over to the crowd around Frank, where I was lost. Two of the photographers I had spotted earlier were snapping pictures, and Frank's face was briefly incandescent as he said, “I just hope people pick up on it in the right way.”

He loved every minute of it and seemed so engrossed that he surprised me a moment later by saying, “Hey, has anyone seen Maude?”

“No,” I said, and I meant it. No one heard me—they were also saying no. I crept across the room to the retrospective.

32

I
WASN'T HERE
, either. The place was empty, a vestibule with a stack of catalogues, more posters, a passageway like a funhouse labyrinth, and beckoning sounds: Twenties music, surf, gulls, traffic, clangs; and the sharp smell of strong light on fresh paint. No people. I looked for myself among the pictures.