I took Photography as an eighth grade elective.
With an eye for beauty but no significant talent in the areas of drawing and painting, I wanted a way to express myself that didn't require me to put pencil or paint or cray-pas to paper anymore.
Photography it was.
My teacher was Mr. Barili, a tight-lipped, toneyed, Ralph Lauren oxford-outfitted gentleman with a thirty dollar haircut and a snazzy signature that looked like it contained more creative skill and imagination than my last twelve assignments combined in Mrs. Rowland's seventh grade drawing class. I coveted his extravagantly fancy felt tipped fountain pen, clipped securely to his shirt pocket. He repeatedly brandished and tapped it on completed prints drilling into our heads the finer points of photographic composition. Punctuating his thoughts, he'd relinquish its inky blackness to his polo-pony'd pocket with a self satisfied sweep suggesting he knew, without a doubt, precisely about what he was speaking.
No sooner did I land on my assigned hard metal stool in that class when it was announced that we would all be responsible for buying our own 35 mm cameras. Handouts were provided with details about what model was required and where to go to make the purchase and the approximately 2 days' time we had during which to procure them; no excuses, no assistance, no subsidies, no kidding.
Also, no camera, no class. So, as you can imagine, we lost more than a few kids on that day.
I went home that night and tried selling my father on the idea that I (we) needed to buy this piece of art equipment and, swallowing hard, steeled myself, expecting an outcome wherein I would be lined up outside the guidance office the next day, dropping Photography along with half the class and adding a crap-tastic study hall to my already very vanilla, non-riveting schedule. However, Dad, purveyor of all of my required equipment throughout the years, thought a fancy camera was a solid investment in my education and happily agreed to take me shopping that night, despite the fact that this was 1982 and money was super tight and this particular photobox was going to be close to a hundred dollars.
I'll always remember the occasion and how having the camera changed me.
We went to Caldor which was in the local mall and had a decent "sporting goods" section which included a variety of cameras. The silvery Pentax K-1000 boxes were stocked high and deep because, I'm sure, every middle and high school in a 40 mile radius was requiring this particular model of its art students back in the day. I spied a well to do classmate and waved. She waved back and both of us scanned the camera selections on either end of the display, tucking our chins into our turtlenecks, me biting my thumbnail and half hiding a grin that said 'my parents do for me'...and 'look how special I am'.
Close to my birthday, my father and I agreed that this would be my present and, picking one up, I scuffed slowly, cradling it to my chest all the way to the checkout counter like a baby.
On my actual birthday, I would receive the accompanying zoom lens, also no cheap ticket.
I began to see the world through my camera lens that year. I wasn't super proficient either at loading film, which we had to practice again and again with our hands hidden in soft black velvety bags, unaided by sight, in an effort to repeatedly force the act into our unconscious, tactile second natures or at developing film, but I loved the preciseness of the mechanical part of it as much as I loved finding things to shoot. The chemical funk of the darkroom reminded me of red wine vinegar and made me crave tomatoes and leaf lettuce while the boys in my class clumsily groped all of us unsuspecting girls, out of sight of the teacher and, ensconced in the bloody red light luminescence, huddled improperly and devilishly close.
Our assignments rarely included the objects I preferred to snap. I wanted to click close ups of single and unique facial features. I liked the messy menagerie of a foul afterparty mess divulging an underaged alcohol blast. I got down and dirty with textures like mammoth sized bootprints stamped deep in frozen mud, bouncy wavelike treads on a rubber truck tire, and the curious peeling of rosy translucent 12 year old female shin skin after an unfortunate and accidental motorcycle tailpipe burn.
Barili wanted trees, flowers and foods.
I wanted life
as art
as life.
I think I earned a B in Photography that year. Mr. B never saw or drummed his pen nub on any of my decent work. I only gave him what he asked for...subjects befitting an overprotected twelve year old's perspective. I remember submitting a print of an inflated surgical glove when he asked for a picture of a hand.
I also remember he wasn't amused.
The class might have taught me how to frame an objet d'art but I truly taught myself to look at everything twice that year as a result of being behind a monocle. I learned that when you look hard enough, the regular can be divine. I picked up that no two artists see things exactly from the same vantage point. The more I squinted and paid attention the less I quit writing off the everyday as ordinary.
Dad was right. The "solid investment" he made in my education taught me how to flip everything on its head in order to get a better look at the light and the shadows.
Like a camera.
Edit: Mr. Barili was (and probably still is) a fantastic photographer. His work was unbelievably complex and grand and I am sure he would have loved to have offered those of us who wanted it a more challenging curriculum. I don't fault him at all for not asking us for shots worthy of publication and I always wished I could have taken additional classes from him.
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