𝑰 𝑷𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒆 // 𝑵𝒂𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒏 𝑷𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒄𝒐𝒕𝒕

𝑪𝒂𝒍𝒎

⌜ • ° + ° • ⌝

Tap tap tap... Hattie fiddled with her pencil, hitting the eraser against her notebook, her page sat there blank, minus the small doodles that danced up the margin of the page. The other students all sat restlessly, Hattie's eyes studying each one, just to pass time. Her eyes landed on a girl in the back row, she was asleep on her desk, her name was Max Caulfield, Hattie wasn't that familiar with her, she never went out of her way to strike up conversations with her or anything. She shrugged off the sight of her sleeping, it wasn't like none of the other students never slept in class, it was pretty normal, so she just shifted back in her seat to face forward and attempted to pay attention to the lesson. 

"Alfred Hitchcock famously called film, 'little pieces of time,' but he could be talking about photography, as he likely was..." The class instructor, Mr. Jefferson, said to the class, he walked around the front of the classroom and made eye contact with Hattie as he continued, "These pieces of time can frame us in our glory and our sorrow, from light to shadow from color to chiarscuro," He lectured on. Hattie noticed Taylor Christensen throw a wad of paper at Kate Marsh and Hattie rolled her eyes at the child-like behavior. She leaned back in her chair, letting out a sigh, focusing her attention back on Mr. Jefferson, "Now, can you give me an example of a photographer who perfectly captured the human condition in black and white?" Mr. Jefferson's eyes scanned the classroom, "Anybody? Bueller?" He waited for an answer, as he waited in silence, Victoria Chase's phone vibrated and she looked down at it for a moment before she looked back up at Mr. Jefferson.

"Diane Arbus," Victoria answered his question, everyone else still sat in their seats silently.

"There you go, Victoria! Why Arbus?" Mr. Jefferson questioned her once again and he turned his body to face her completely, smiling in approval. 

Victoria shifted her body to match Mr. Jefferson's energy, "Because of her images of hopeless faces, you feel like- totally haunted by the eyes of those sad mothers and children."

Hattie let out yet another sigh and looked over to the clock, as she did this, Mr. Jefferson started to go on a tangent, Hattie zoned out of most of this conversation, but, one particular thing that he said caught her attention, "I could frame any one of you in a dark corner and capture you in a moment of desperation and any one of you could do that to me, isn't that too easy? Too obvious? What if Arbus chose to capture people at the height of their beauty or innocence?" Hattie felt a shiver down her spine as he said this statement. It was a weird and unsettling comment, but, he did have a point. She wrote the statement in her notebook as he continued his tagent. Then, there was a click followed with a flash behind her, Hattie rose a brow and quickly looked over her shoulder to see what had happened. Mr. Jefferson also noticed this, he put a finger to his lips, "Shh... I believe Max has taken what you kids call a 'selfie' a dumb work for a wonderful photographic tradition... And Max has a gift," Mr. Jefferson was quick to shift his focus on Max, "Of course, as you all know, the photo portrait has been popular since the early 1800s." Hattie flipped to a fresh page in her notebook and started to draw a portrait of her boyfriend, Nathan Prescott, from memory. Once she started the process of shading, Mr. Jefferson asked yet another question, "Max, since you've captured our interest, and clearly want to join the conversation... Can you please tell us the name of the process that gave birth to the first self-portraits."