A long time ago, in Chicago, working as an actress, I saw a friend’s head shots and really liked the photographer’s unique style. So I made an appointment with the photographer. He worked out of one of the huge warehouses south of the Sears Tower, empty, cavernous, filled with artists’ spaces, acting workshops, midnight raves where you needed a code word to get in (raves I used to go to with whatever Guy of the Week was taking me out. I wrote about that time and one of those guys – the first guy – here, and I can’t believe it but I have no memory of writing that essay. I tripped over it the other day when I was cleaning out my archives and read it, agog. How can one write a monster essay like that and not remember doing it?) I packed up a couple of different outfits and headed to my head shot appointment. There was a makeup artist there and the photographer. The space was yawningly empty, and the lights he set up for our session created a little circle of light in those shadows. He was a good photographer. I had walked in wearing my biker’s jacket, black jeans, and Doc Marten’s. It was one of the outfits I wore, more of a rock ‘n’ roll outfit than the other ones, which were more, “Hi, I’m a young actress, and I can play anything!” outfits.
I don’t remember how this actually went down, how the photo shoot transformed. But I do remember that he was a young photographer, new in his career, and was looking to expand his portfolio. He had told me that. And there was something about me (he told ne), especially when I was wearing the biker’s jacket, that was evocative of something else for him, something he wanted to capture. (Now, years and years later, with a couple of crack-ups in the rear view mirror, I wonder if he was sensing something about me that I couldn’t see myself yet. I was very young. It’s a possibility.) He said he sensed a “darkness” in me and would I be open to doing another kind of photo shoot that would explore that? (Heh heh. No, he didn’t mean THAT kind of photo shoot.)
He wanted to shoot me with tears down my face, streaking my eye makeup, while I was rolling around on the floor crying. Sure, I was game. I had nothing else to do that afternoon. The hovering make-up artist went to work, creating these gleaming fake tears to repeatedly put on my face (the lights dry up normal tears). He gave me a handkerchief to sob into. And then we went to town.
I have rolls and rolls of film of me rolling around on the floor, weeping. He blasted The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Aretha, great poets of sadness and feeling to keep the mood going. Sometimes I am calm-er in the photos, exhausted, sometimes I am sobbing loudly (he loved those the best, shouting out at me, “Let it out. CRY.” I’d explode: BWAAA-WAHHH-WAHHH … with shouts of “YES!” coming at me from the shadows.)
I still have these photos (four of them below). They are a reminder of a time long gone by. I feel ambivalent because I was so young, so “up” for things. I have never been more wild than I was at that time of my life. I joked to M., (aka “Window-Boy”), the guy I had started seeing around the time of these photos, “I’m actually surprised I haven’t been sold into a white sex slavery ring at this point,” and he actually replied, all laconic and flat-line, “Yeah, that would check out.” Made for each other, he and I. So there’s a level of sadness – longing? – when I look at these, because I was so young. But whatever. At least I can honestly say that my particular youth was not wasted on the young.
Later, when I went to the photographer’s office to pick up my negatives, I saw that he had blown up the first photo below into a gigantic poster that was hanging behind the front desk.
I don’t even remember that photographer’s name.
I remember when you had the second photo as your profile shot here. That’s gotta be 7 years ago, right? He captured your stunning bone structure (Madeline Kahn had nothing on you!), porcelain skin and soulful luminous megawatt brainiac artistic intensity. Love these! And love you – – xxx Stevie
// megawatt brainiac artistic intensity. //
hahahaha I love you Stevie. Yeah, that second photo was my Avatar here for a long time! Good memory!!
Don’t forget //soulful luminous// :)
Oh that’s right. I always leave those out. :)
and I think that initial Avatar on my site may have given people the wrong (or right?) idea.
Who knows. That photo has always cracked me up. Dead-on sadness, accusing the camera of how much I huurrrrrrrt.
Well I somehow grocked you regardless of the leading photo! :) Say, I just created an FB account a week ago – you and Alex are so famous these days I can’t friend you, just follow you. Of course I’m dying to throw comments around – – how do I get Mr. Zuckerberg to let me be more intimate with you both?
wait, you can’t friend me? Let me investigate – that is NOT RIGHT.
Just found you and sent you a Friend Request. Look for it! I have no idea how FB works – and had no idea people couldn’t friend me anymore. Alex remembers you – you should shoot her a message!
Ah, the days gone by when we all hung out on my site or hers! Thank goodness we got in on this blog thing early though – otherwise we might never have found each other.
A great day for me to discover you and Alex and Mitchell and Beth and the list goes on and on – like hitting a pocket of platinum in the abyss of life. :) Or something like that! MWAH!!
There’s a billion Stephen Carlisles – I’m Stephen.Carlisle.714
I think I found you.
At least I hope it’s you – otherwise I just sent some random guy a Friend Request.
LOL you did send a friend request to someone else! Maybe it’s the guy who wrote the theme song for WKRP in Cincinnati (he has the same name). Here I am:
https://www.facebook.com/stephen.carlisle.714
hahahaha Oops – can I retract the request? Hilarious.
Okay let me try this again.
aaaaand we have liftoff.
That last one is a shot straight out of Cassavetes. Sheila Under the Influence.
Best compliment ever. Thank you!