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When the kid was eight his father fatally gave his son the camera that wouldtake the photo’s that would eventually drive him to diving off the 43rd floor of his office building. With a little darkroom basics, the kid would soon develop and print his own negatives and would be soon using those photo’s against his classmates, his teachersand his father. When his father received the blowjob from his secretary of three years in the front seat of the family Buick, the child was there to unceremoniously photograph the carnal act, in both black and white and colour. The colour prints were printed in a nearby photo finishing lab owned by a Chinese couple, who until~this point in time had a failing business as Polaroid was steadily developing and Super 8 camera’s began to replace the family Pentax.
When Mr. Chan noticed the prints of the boys father getting it from a young brunette, he took it upon himself to improve his financial situation. The kid himself was not aware of this, but when his father saw the prints stuffed in a yellow manila envelope left on his front step and addressed to him, he had a sneaking suspicion his son was the one who took the photo’s. This was easily determined by the kids pugish mug in the side window captured by the 50 mm lens he bought some two months before. Compounded by the fact that no photo was taken from above the height of 3 foot eight, his son’s measurement when last he drew the line on the top of his head beside the General Electric white refrigerator.
When he asked his son about the photo’s the child responded that he would show Gramma and Grampa and Mommy, if he did not 1) buy, a wider angled lens with a faster f—stop and 2) raise the boys allowance by six dollars. The father thought to beat the kid senseless there and then but decided not to and instead headed for the nearest camera shop, bought a wide angle prime lens with an f—stop of 1.4 and raised the boy’s allowance by six bucks. But only he said, if the boy would give the prints and the negatives and any copy that the boy had made to him. The boy complied and handed over a lunchbox full of 5x7, 8x8 and folded 10x12 prints on both shiny and glossy paper. He saw that the photos had been blow up and enlarged and he conceded to the fact that was unmistakable; the kid could print a photograph incredibly well. It was not until one week later when another yellow manila envelope arrived stating clearly that had he not pay the sum of $20,000 dollars, to be dropped in a back alley on the 3rd night of February at 8:45 pm or he and his secretary would both loose their jobs and he would loose his wife of 16 years. When he questioned his son repeatedly about this his son denied that he had done so, and thinking the kid was just precocious, ignored the 3rd night of February. A second warning was headed, but he ignored that too.
When his wife opened the manila envelope, roughly around the same time, both his boss and his secretary’s mother, father and next door neighbor opened similar packages. So it was not a long drop to the ground floor of his building on 42 St. at 11:16 am on February the 8th. It took he thought maybe nine seconds. Rescue workers who questioned nearby witnesses to the accident said he fell 43 stories in 11 seconds.
His Mother would have similar tragedy years later, but until that fateful day in May some 9 years after her husband committed suicide she was stuck raising the little boy. This would not an be easy task to do for the Mother. Her son, the cold little fish that he was, showed little emotion about anything. The child who spoke little, spoke less and less, and instead became detached and absorbed into the world of photography. At the Father’s funeral, the Mother had told the boy that it was okay to take photographs thinking that this act would somehow allow the boy to adjust to his life without a dad. Given full permission, the boy took photographs of anything or anyone he saw within the view finder almost permanently attached to the child’s right eye. The funeral would be the boy’s first photo essay, and later captioned the work with such titles as ‘Priest”, Mother, Casket, and Crematorium. He would get an A+ from his grade three teacher Ms. Alice Tinkerton.
Across the hall from Mrs. Tinkerton’s third grade class was Mary Masterson, an early budding 9 year old natural blond who wore too much make—up and would become the boy’s first model. Mary who’s breasts began to develop early in third grade was the daughter
of a fashion queen, so it was only natural that she follow in the footsteps of all natural blond beauties that become spokes model’s at Detroit auto shows. Her face was at nine already plastic like, with a sheen common to women who later fail in Hollywood and make smut in some San Diego basement, until around the age of thirty when they settle down to a disastrous marriage and create children that replenish the every present meat shop that is Los Angeles.
The girl would pose all too easily to a number of sittings that the boy set up for her. Perhaps it was her dreams of silver screen stardom that led her to pose nude for the boy, perhaps it was just her misguided ideas that beautiful women if they were to be successful at all must of course pose in the buff. When the seventh grade teacher Allan Ackerby caught the boy with the girl nude in the gymnasium equipment room posing with a base ball bat, he unlocked a scandal that would end both his perspective career and his current girlfriend’s Ms. Alice Tinkerton, and lead to a lifelong alcohol and substance problem.
Allan and Alice would never teach again when the news broke that they were involved in a child pornography ring. In reality, a janitor happened upon the photo’s the boy had taken of the girl, several hundred by this time, in Allan Ackerby’s desk. Akerby and Tinkerton had forced the boy to give up the photo’s stored in his desk and his green knapsack. Contemplating what action should be taken for the boy and girl was their ultimate downfall. Had they, talked to the Principal Mr. Felsom, or the vice principal Peter Turkin before the janitor Yanov Lacoski turned the photo’s into the police, they would not lead the brutal co—dependant relationship that would characterize their sad pathetic lives.
No matter how hard Alice wept, she could not convince neither judge nor jury of her wrong doing. Peter, had unfortunately been some what of an amateur photographer himself, obsessed with creating Jimeaningful art” whatever that may mean from a seventh grade elementary school teacher and so when the police confiscated his enlarger and camera’s they marked the man with a slow death that would stink to high heaven.
Little Mary Masterson, the young whore that she was, did little to convince the police or a jury that the boy had indeed taken the photographs. When they asked her who took the photo’s she pointed to ~‘them” and began to cry. This officially convicted the couple and they would serve 5 years each in separate correctional facilities. The boy never took the stand and when questioned by police said nothing so they could only assume that he was deeply traumatized somehow by the incident. Mary Masterson would later grow up with a deep fetish for nude and pornographic photography and before dropping out of college to become the new blond thing in adult cinema she would enroll almost exclusively in high school drama courses that would deprive her from ever fully developing any discernable personality or having any form of normal human sexual relationship. She would die in her early thirties spreading disease across the American States, two townships in the Balkans, and the territory of Guam when she signed up for the USO.
By the time the kid was Eleven his Mother could no longer stand to be around him. If the boy did talk, which was no becoming rare except for prolonged periods where nothing but photography jargon would spew from his little mouth. It started off where she would say uYes dear, that’s very interesting” and such, until she could no longer find development times, reciprocity failure, the density levels of the negative in the toe and shoulder, interesting much less understandable, for even in photography circles only the most purist geeks find these things of interest. And by this time the child was emitting an unnatural odour of fixing solutions, development baths and sometimes gave off the sweet smell of film stock on odd occasions and that was reason enough to try to get rid of the boy.
So it was a cold day in February that his Mother brought him to the cities foremost photographer Alexander Michael Thomas who since the age of 34 had been in the peak of his artistic career. When Alexander Michael Thomas saw the eleven year old boy enter his studio he thought very little of the short little boy that accompanied his Mother. At 4.9” the boy was far from tall and his black greasy hair was parted to the side just to add to his creepiness. But
what caught the photographer off guard was the boy’s black olive eyes. Those little pits of darkness seemed to suck all the light from the room, instantly taking it in and examining it for a fine composition, throwing away any needless information like a rich man throws away his garbage. The boy had no fear of him, he felt, no fear or feelings about anything and he became cold and started out in a clammy sweat with the kid looking at his photo’s and camera equipment. The little fucker was sizing him up, him the best goddamn photographer in the city. Fuck him, the pea eyed little prick. His mother explained to him earlier by telephone that the kid was “talented” what ever the hell that means from an amateur. The kid was eleven, probably barely even able to hold the camera steady, still taking photo’s of his toys. Who the hell was she to say who was “gifted” or “talented” or what have you. No, I am the one to say if he’s good and I tell you that smelly little kid would never learn anything from him.
“He’s too young, bring him back when he’s sixteen The kids stare turned to Medusa’s gaze but he felt justified and good about letting him down. The kid needs disappointment early if he wants to be a good photographer. “His father died when he was eight” and no doubt by natural causes “He needs guidance, and I can pay you if you’re worried about the expense” “No not at all, not at all, I just think he should come back when he has more experience”. “Just look at his photo’s” “Yes their very nice.” She opened the black portfolio. Each page neatly held a black and white print. Jesus Christ the bastard was good. “Are those his?” uYes.~~ “All of them?” “Why yes all of them.” “Who printed them for him?” “He did.”, “All of them?” “Yes, are they any good?” “Well the kid can definitely improve.” he better not or he was out of a job, “ Yeah I guess I can show him a few things, come back tomorrow after school”. And just then he noticed the kid pull his lips to the side in a what can only be described as a smile. “Can you leave these here, I want to examine them more closely.” “Is that okay with you?” and the boy spoke “Yes.” and Alexander Michael Thomas knew the devil was standing not more then six feet from him, smiling.
When the devil left he opened his finest scotch an 18 year Glenlivet and he drank it until he drank the bottle and moved upon his worst a blended scotch ‘~Bell’s” and he drank that until he moved on to Southern whiskey. He spread the boys photo’s across the floor of his studio and at first he stood above them with his glass of Glenlivet. His prints were archival glossy fibre based silver resin prints that would make Minor White and Ansel Adams proud. He could not even find a speck of dust and he looked, he really looked for them. The prints were perfect zone scale. Zone IX was perfect, his zone IV was one perfect zone bellow zone V 17.8 percent gray. His zone I, black with tonality, matched against the gray of zone II and III. Worse the boy could take a photograph. The kid covered the themes. Street photography that would make Robert frank weep. His studies of flowers, marvels that Edward Weston couldn’t touch. He made every day life look like combat photography, and perhaps to him it was. Robert Capa would step on a land mine only to find out some greasy smelly rotten loathsome little shit would steal his soul some twenty years later.
After the whiskey was finished he wept for an hour, phoned his mother for some moral support and threw up four times into the bathtub. The next day Alexander would close his door to the boy, leaving a note form him to come back another day because he had contacted the flu. The boy came after school and stood outside and watched his studio for a full hour before leaving. Michael felt he was trapped inside. He could feel the boy’s stare, and he knew that he was inside. Worse the boy didn’t leave the spot he was standing in, and never stopped looking up at his window for a full hour. Thomas knew this because from the moment the kid arrived he stared at him from his third floor studio window. Worse, the kid stared back with his little black olive eyes until Alexander finally had to shut the lights off in the studio for the boy to leave. He would return for five more days until he would let the boy in. It was a long five days, but it would be a longer five years as the boy apprenticed in his studio.
When one thinks of an apprentice they often think of a boy who learns from the master until he has achieved the role as master. When the boy finally entered the studio Alexander Michael Thomas knew he had become the apprentice, the boy the master. That is not to say he showed him a few things, that he did. He showed him how to light a subject, use strobes lights and print colour. But really, all he had to do is show the boy something about lighting the model and soon he could do it with better control than himself.