Chapter 13 Brady #2
Collins looked at her hands in her lap. “I didn’t know that,” she said quietly. “That’s…nice. That’s really nice.”
“Did you do more portraits like that?” I asked.
“From the same project, yeah. It was my first time working with film. I swiped an old film camera from Toades. There were ten of them, I think.”
“It’s really fucking good,” I said. “I’d, um, love to see more of your work sometime.” Collins turned her head to look out the window and didn’t respond.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Fine,” she said again.
But she didn’t seem like it. “You know, I’ve noticed photography seems like a touchy subject for you.
” I didn’t know exactly why I decided to voice my observation, but now it was out there.
Collins gave me a dejected shrug. It tugged at me.
“Do you not like it anymore?” I asked—most of me expected her not to answer, but she did.
“I love it,” she said. Her voice was wobbly. “It’s my favorite thing in the world. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”
“But?” I asked, sensing there was one there.
“I can’t do it without the voices. I don’t know how to do it when they’re not talking to me.” The voices, meaning the ghosts.
“Why not?” I slowed the truck down, so I could turn into the alleyway that led to the small lot behind the shop.
“It’s complicated,” Collins sighed.
“Try me,” I said as the truck rolled to a stop. I felt better now that I could face her. I wanted her to know that I was here, and I was listening.
“That portrait you saw today,” she said.
“It wasn’t just a picture of Wilder. His uncle is in it, too—the person who passed the farm to him.
” I thought back to the photo—how it was framed with the Wilkes Farm sign, and how Wilder was the subject, but he didn’t feel like the only one.
“I did a portrait of Boone for that series, too—with one of his horses and some of his dogs. There’s one of Cleo, the woman who owns the bar, with her mother. ”
“So every picture…” I trailed off.
“Has a subject that no one can see,” Collins finished.
“I don’t do human portraits anymore. That’s not what I’m known for.
But every photo I’ve taken of places and things around the world features someone who used to be living—someone who I’ve talked to and gotten to know.
They don’t appear in the photos, obviously, but I aim to capture them with something they loved or built or the place where they had snuck away to spend time with their lover or where they looked out to the horizon and felt hope.
“If I can’t talk to them, the places are meaningless.” Collins swallowed. “And I’ve slowly watched every photo I’ve taken since they started to fade lose its soul.”
I felt the pain in her voice like a kick to the stomach. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “I’m so sorry, Collins.”
She looked away from me, out the window, and brought a hand up to wipe at her eyes.
“I feel like I’m losing my soul, too.” And then she sucked in a breath.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I unbuckled my seatbelt and scooted closer to her.
I didn’t reach for her or touch her or anything, but I wanted to.
“What happened?” I asked cautiously. Collins had been more vulnerable with me in the past few days than I ever expected, but I sensed we were treading into even deeper waters.
“It wasn’t one specific thing,” she sighed.
“It was a culmination of them, I think.” I nodded, waiting for her to keep going.
She turned back to me, eyes glossy. I balled my hand into a fist to stop myself from touching her face.
“Last year, I got this opportunity to work with Robert Bright on this Alaskan wolf project for Blue Sky Geographic. He’s a Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer.
A huge deal. He wanted a second shooter, and the Blue Sky team hired me.
“When I got there, I found out that Robert had also brought his son, Jacoby. Robert had pitched Jacoby as his second shooter, but Blue Sky said they didn’t like his portfolio.
Both of them treated me like dirt. Robert criticized every one of my shots.
He would have me send my raw files to him at the end of every day, and he called my work contrived and derivative.
Which normally wouldn’t faze me, but I’d looked up to him for so long.
I’d seen every photo he’d ever published.
He took this photo of an old mountain lion walking to his final resting place.
I had a poster of it on my wall growing up.
It’s still on the wall of my bedroom at my parents’ house. ”
“That’s…hard,” I said. “When someone you admire doesn’t live up to who you thought he was.”
“It only got worse from there. When I saw a few of Jacoby’s shots, I noticed that he was trying to replicate my framing.
When I brought it up to him, told him that I’d be happy to show him how I choose my frame—without any wolf ghosts, obviously—he scoffed at me, told me there was no way he needed tips from a nobody like me.
“I stood my ground, though—gave my opinions on the shots and how I thought we could make everything more cohesive.”
“Let me guess. They didn’t take any of that well.”
“They called me difficult, and being labeled a difficult woman on a project full of men is basically a death sentence. After that, Blue Sky started giving me really intense critiques, too. My interactions with them flipped on a dime overnight—I got left off emails and because of that, I ended up getting kicked off a lot of site visits because I didn’t know they were happening.
I would get down to a hotel lobby at the time I thought we were meeting, only to be told the time got changed and everyone had left without me.
When I did get to take photos, I was consistently told that they were unusable, but I never got concrete feedback on why.
“I, um, had a hard time after that. I lashed out at the assistants, showed up to shoots late, turned in my photos late…and the more unsure of myself I became, the quieter the voices got.” I had a sinking feeling that I knew how this part of the story ended.
“I got fired from my dream job,” she sighed.
“And I started to believe all the things they said about my work. I didn’t get offered any big jobs anywhere else after that.
Photography is a small world, and when people felt like they had to choose between hiring me or staying on an influential man’s good side, Robert won out. ”
Collins set her hand on the seat, and her shoulders slumped. I couldn’t fight it anymore. I reached out and put my hand on top of hers. She didn’t move, so I didn’t either.
“You didn’t deserve that,” I said.
“I think maybe I did,” she whispered. “I wasn’t…
nice to people after that. Everything went downhill after that project, but I sped it up by meeting people’s low expectations of me.
There wasn’t any reason for people to keep giving me chances.
I just kept sinking, and my abilities started to fade the deeper I got. And now,” she sighed, “I’m here.”
I didn’t know how to respond to everything she had just told me. She had just cracked herself wide open, and I wanted to make sure she knew I was here for her—and even though she felt like so much had abandoned her, I wasn’t going anywhere.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a few breaths’ worth of silence. “I didn’t mean to dump…”
“No,” I interrupted her. “Don’t apologize. I just…I really want to say the right thing here—I want you to know I’m sorry you’ve been carrying all that around.”
Collins blinked a few times. “Thank you.” She blew out a breath. “I can’t believe this is the second time you’ve seen me cry behind this stupid shop.”
“Do you want me to cry, too?” I asked. “Try and even the score a bit.” I didn’t know what spell was floating around my truck cab, but I felt like I’d do anything in this moment to make her laugh.
And she did. A little.
“Thank you, Brady.” Collins squeezed my hand.