Bad Glass

“This … this is a Pulitzer Prize,” I said. I wasn’t asking a question or voicing surprise. The words just fell out of my mouth, without emotion or real understanding.

Cob Gilles grunted. “Yeah, well, the photo’s a fucking joke. The guy pretty much collapsed right after I took that shot. He had a fever of 103 and a wound on his leg that was going gangrenous. He was mewling in pain as he walked—just, just fucking mewling, like a pistol-whipped kitten. And that expression in the picture? I swear to God, it was never there. It must have been a freak twist of the mouth in between sobs of pain.”

He grabbed the photo from my hands and tossed it to the floor, spinning it back toward the other framed photographs. There was a loud crash as it hit the wall.

“I was so proud of that shot. So fucking proud! And it wasn’t even real.” He gestured toward the shattered frame. “That’s not what was going on over there, in the desert. It was a fluke. Nothing more.”

“Does it matter?” I asked. “You got the shot. You were in the right place at the right time. The soldier’s expression was there, and you caught it. And the emotion … it resonates. So what if it was a fluke?”

“You are a reminder,” Cob Gilles said with a smile. “You’re a fucking blast from my past. I thought the exact same thing back then.” He stuck out his thumb, once again gesturing toward the broken frame. “I thought: if you click the shutter enough, if you burn through enough film, you’ll eventually get a shot. Not the shot, mind you, just a shot. And that’s photography: a fluke occurrence, something absolutely unforeseen. The collision between chance, preparation, and time. And it doesn’t even matter what it is as long as it looks good.

“But it’s not true. It’s just not true. There are lies to every image. And the things you choose to show, the things you keep … they do much more than just illustrate. They change things. They alter opinion and mood. They change minds. And not in an objective, reasoned way, but deep down, on a powerful, instinctive level.” He let out a tired little chuckle, very cold, very bitter. “And you lie with pictures just like you lie with words. You can’t help it, you can’t control it.

“And I’m not just talking about news photography, about subjects steeped in politics and scandal. I’m talking about a sly smile on your lover’s lips. I’m talking about the expression on your child’s face.” He closed his eyes, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, making it look like he was trying to swallow something, like he was choking down a rough ball of emotion. “All of that stuff turns dark. Through bad glass, it all gets tainted.”

Cob Gilles finished his beer and crushed the can against the edge of his desk, letting the crumpled shape fall to the floor. “You’ll see,” he said. “You’re young. You’ll learn.”

I nodded, not quite sure how to take this exceedingly bleak view of photography. If there were lies to photography, I figured, there was truth, too, truths we’d never see if not through the dispassionate glass eye of a camera. How’d he lose sight of that? I wondered. How’d he get so bitter?

“And what are you working on now?” I asked. “Who sent you here? Newsweek? TIME? Rolling Stone?”

He shook his head. “No. That’s not me. Not anymore. No fucking way.” His face contorted into tight pale lines, as if even the thought of work gave him pain. “I mean, I still take pictures—I guess, I guess it’s a compulsion with me, something I have to do—but I delete them now. Immediately. Especially if they’re … weird. If it’s the city.” He forced a tense laugh. “Fuck! Most of the time now, if you see me taking pictures, I’m working without a memory card. It’s just, just—fucking click and consigning it all to the ether.”

“Why?” I asked. “What happened?”

He shrugged. “I just stopped trusting. I stopped trusting all of this.” He gestured vaguely at the photography gear laid out before him. “It’s no good. The images it shows … it’s all lies now, Dean. It’s all bad glass. And I just don’t want to spread it anymore.”

He once again reached beneath his desk, this time coming up with a half-empty bottle of Scotch and a pair of glasses. I wondered briefly what else he had squirreled away down there, around his feet.

I watched him fill the glasses. His hands were steady but slow.

“What do you think’s happening here?” I asked.

He stared at me for a second, then turned the question back around. “What do you think, Dean?” He handed me my drink. “You’re new here, right? You haven’t been tainted yet … at least not much. What do you think’s happening here?”

I paused for a moment, thinking. I didn’t have an answer, and I didn’t really want to venture a guess. “Mama Cass thinks it’s some type of hallucinogen, something in the environment that’s making us all crazy.”