The Portrait Was Supposed to Show Me Exactly as I Am — Until I Saw What My Friend Had Softened
PART 9
The opening was forty-eight hours away.
For once, urgency helped.
Beth sent every subject a simple email with three attachments: the selected frame as originally photographed, the current edited version, and a short checklist.
Keep or restore permanent skin texture?
Keep or remove temporary blemishes?
Hair color changes?
Body or face shaping?
Other requests?
Final approval: yes or no.
Lorraine called it “the world’s least sexy spa menu.”
Kendra approved hers with two changes.
Noreen asked for the scar back and wanted a stray bra strap removed.
Rita kept the under-eye correction, restored the mouth lines, and asked Beth not to brighten her teeth because, in her words, “I drink coffee on purpose.”
Nobody selected the same combination.
That pleased me.
I approved the window portrait Beth and I had worked on together.
At the bottom of the form I wrote: No age-softening, no face/body shaping. Color/exposure version approved 11/13.
Then I stared at the phrase age-softening.
It sounded like a mattress feature.
I left it anyway.
Beth called fifteen minutes later.
“You signed it like a contract.”
“You invited an administrative manager.”
“I deserve this.”
“Probably.”
She laughed, then grew quiet.
“Mark wants to keep the opening remarks about confidence.”
“Whose confidence?”
“The subjects’.”
“Did he ask us?”
“No.”
I waited.
Beth sighed. “I hear it now.”
“Good.”
“He also wants two of you to say a few words about embracing aging.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I knew you would say that.”
“Then why are you calling?”
“Because I’m trying to ask instead of assume.”
That stopped me.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Was that painful?”
“A little.”
I went to the gallery after work to see the new print in person.
The space had changed since Monday. All eleven portraits were up. The labels were mounted. Small directional lights had been adjusted so the faces appeared out of the white walls without looking theatrical.
My portrait hung between Noreen and Kendra.
I stood in front of it.
The silver streak was there.
The neck was there.
The tiredness I had worried about was there too, but it looked less like failure at forty inches wide than it had on my phone. It looked like a Tuesday.
Mark Feldman, the gallery manager, came up beside me.
“This is stronger,” he said.
I looked at him.
“Stronger than what?”
He smiled carefully. “Than the first version.”
“Because?”
“Because it has tension.”
I almost rolled my eyes.
“Please don’t make my neck into art criticism.”
He laughed.
Mark was in his sixties and dressed like every gallery manager I had ever met: black shirt, excellent shoes, glasses that were either very expensive or designed to look inexpensive.
“Beth told me there were some concerns about how the project was framed,” he said.
“There were concerns about how the faces were framed too.”
“Understood.”
“Is it?”
He nodded toward my portrait.
“Beth replaced four prints in three days. I understand enough to know this was not a caption problem.”
I appreciated that.
Then he said, “I do want to ask about the social preview.”
My shoulders tightened.
“What about it?”
“We removed the old version, obviously. But the original post was shared a few times. We can’t control copies people may have made.”
“I know.”
“Beth was worried you’d want us to issue a correction.”
“A correction saying what? ‘We briefly posted Angela with fewer neck lines than authorized’?”
Mark coughed to hide a laugh.
“Something like that.”
“No. Delete what you control. Use only the approved image going forward. I do not need a public confession.”
“Thank you.”
“That is not a favor to the gallery. I just don’t want my face turned into a morality play.”
He nodded.
I walked through the rest of the show.
Lorraine looked magnificent and, according to her own instructions, had no red vein beside her nose. Rita looked like herself after good sleep. Kendra kept the sun spots on one cheek and removed two on the other because she said the second pair had arrived after an unfortunate beach vacation and had no sentimental value. Noreen’s shoulder scar curved pale against her white top.
There was no single visual rule anymore.
That made the show less conceptually neat.
It also made it more honest.
Beth arrived carrying a box of printed programs.
She watched me finish the circuit.
“Well?”
“It looks like eleven different women made eleven different decisions.”
She gave me a tentative smile.
“That’s either praise or the death of my artistic vision.”
“Maybe your artistic vision needed more chairs at the table.”
“Administrative manager.”
“Photographer.”
She handed me a program.
The introduction no longer promised fearlessness.
It said the portraits were made through a process of conversation about how each subject wanted to be seen, and that the final images reflected both photographic interpretation and subject choice.
I read it twice.
“I can live with this.”
Beth groaned.
“You need a warmer phrase.”
“I am fifty. My phrases have set.”
She smiled.
Then I noticed a blank section of wall near the entrance.
“Was your portrait supposed to go there?”
Beth looked at it.
“Yes.”
“What’s going there now?”
“Nothing.”
“Good.”
She looked surprised again.
“You really mean that.”
“You don’t owe the show your face because you asked for ours.”
“That sounds convenient for me.”
“It is. Consent is inconvenient right up until it is yours.”
Beth looked down at the programs.
“I might photograph myself again someday.”
“Then do.”
“I might hate it again.”
“Also allowed.”
She nodded.
As I left, I stopped once more in front of my portrait.
I still did not think it was the most flattering photograph Beth had ever taken of me.
I could let it be a picture instead of a verdict.
