Free Eight Girls Taking Pictures by Whitney Otto Page A

their breath as they sat, side by side, on the parlor sofa. Business had been decidedly off for the past severalmonths. 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 LallieCharles, 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