The Age of Light

by Whitney Scharer

“I’m not scared. I just want to leave.” “I understand. If you ever need anything, you can look me up. I’m Man Ray.”

Lee finds him informative and patient. He’s warm, surprisingly open with all the tricks he’s learned. He tells her that photography is more like science than like art, that they are chemists doing experiments in a lab, and it does seem that way to her, as much about the technical work in the darkroom as it is about the original artistic vision.

Lee figures that there is time, that she is learning by observation, just as a scientist would do.

Man is in professor mode. “Light is our tool,” he is saying. “Film is just a surface for capturing and holding light, but until the film has been developed, extra light becomes the enemy.”

“And I said to Rémy,” the woman shouts, “I said that what is going to ruin art isn’t the young people, the young people are fine, no matter what anyone says about their heads being completely empty. What’s going to ruin art is commerce.” The last word is said imperiously, with the hoisted drink waggled for emphasis, liquid sloshing.

But another piece of her knows that if she does not tell him—if she keeps him at the same distance she’s always kept everyone—their relationship will never deepen past where it is now.

Man never seems interested. He has purposefully cut off contact with his own family, and doesn’t ever seem to regret it. It’s a philosophy he shares with many of the other members of his circle. Like them, he says he wants to be free of the tangled alliances of his past, because being free will help him focus on his art.