Photo Shoot

I wrote, a while ago, about all the babble that goes through my brain when a camera is pointed in my direction.  I am not, within, what I am without.  Do any of us achieve that perfect correspondence?

But for the recent Pennsylvania Gazette story about the life I've lived through books, I was invited to a enter the cinematic world of Chris Crisman, another Penn grad who has made it his business to appease and to ease and (somehow in the midst of it all) to make art.  You would never know it, by looking at this shot, but the lens was so close to my face when this picture was made that I suspected Chris of doing a study on the tangle of my eyelashes.  (Lancome, next time, I was thinking to myself.  And also:  I wish I'd gone to bed last night.)

Clearly, though, Chris knows what he is doing, and I share this outtake from the shoot today because Chris made Memorial Hall, a Centennial-era building, the true and deserving subject of his shot.  It's a beautiful place, newly and justly restored, and can't you just picture it back in 1876—the crowds massing in the high heat of summer, eager for the art within?

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The Pennsylvania Gazette Feature/Dangerous Neighbors Excerpt

The University of Pennsylvania has been extraordinarily good to me—inviting me to contribute to the pages of The Pennsylvania Gazette and Peregrine; trusting me to teach a small class of brilliant undergrads; putting me at the helm of an online book group; asking me to read with Alice Elliott Dark, or to sit on panels with Buzz Bissinger, or to join David Remnick for a Kelly Writers House dinner; and to come to know, even better, the likes of fellow teachers Jay Kirk and Karen Rile. 

Earlier this summer, John Prendergast, the editor of The Pennsylvania Gazette, wrote to say that he'd read Dangerous Neighbors and that he looked forward to having a conversation.  We had that conversation on a sunny day sitting on a row of skinny benches while a tennis match played out before us.  I was my breathless, enthused, and sleep-starved self (as you'll read) and John was the thoughtful man he is.  Several weeks later, the photographer Chris Crisman and his team met me at Memorial Hall and put up with me long enough to take my picture.

It is a generous story, accompanied by one of my favorite scenes from the book.  It will always be cherished.  And Chris, thanks for pulling your camera lens back.  You know what that means to me.

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Joining the long list of the many things I am really bad at

is standing in as myself at a photo shoot.  I don't know how it is done.  I don't know how anyone stares placidly into the glass eye of the lens, or away from it, chin a-tilt.  Even when the chosen photographer is outstanding, as surely Chris Crisman, today's poor victim, is, I cannot be me in front of a camera, cannot give up the self-conscious glint, cannot stop imagining all the ways I'd rearrange the proportions of my face.  I cannot, most of all, stop imagining being him, the poor photographer, who took on this noble trade to do far more, I'm sure, than photograph an author who spends most of her time alone at her desk, or at a gym or studio, sweating.  I'm either boringly still or impossibly active.  I am not what pictures are made of.

Still, as with all difficult things, there is a lining.  That lining lies, for me, in getting to watch this remarkable photographer at work.  His portfolio speaks volumes.

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