Smile

Two months ago I called my favorite local photographer Jen Davis...

Two months ago I called my favorite local photographer Jen Davis to ask if she would take a picture of me that I could put on the back flap of my new graphic anti-cookbook Where There’s Smoke There’s Dinner, coming out from Top Shelf/IDW this November.

It had been ten years since Jen and I first met.

“I like your name,” I’d said then, “it’s a good name.” “You too,” she’d answered, not missing a beat.

That was 2015, and I’d decided to upgrade the author photo for my new graphic novel The Story of My Tits from the picture my buddy had snapped with his iPhone as I leaned out the window of New York City’s fabled Chelsea Hotel, a photo which had been reproduced in grainy black-and-white on the flap of my first book Underwire.

And because I like things to be organic and locally-sourced, I’d called a young woman who’d just opened her own photography business while raising her two young children.

I grew up around too much photography—I’ll just get that out there. My father took endless pictures of the family, making us pose and wait forever till he got things right. Whereas I was an ARTIST. I “sketched.” (And I might have gotten the picture done faster than he did…)

But once I could take a picture with my phone, I tried. I really tried. And on my umpteenth failure to capture the marvelousness of the vase of f lowers directly in front of me, I have almost thrown my phone across the room. Increasingly, I have marveled at how a photographer can make our commonly-held reality look so particular.

When Jen first pulled up at my house, we chatted, getting to know each other. She wanted to hear all about my book and about the image I wanted to project. Slowly she set up her gear and climbed her stepladder, and did her thing. In the shot we picked I’m sitting by a window on my hearth with a wicked grin, sending out a definite 70’s vibe (outdated and loving it!) Jen perfectly captured who I was then: breast cancer survivor, mischievous middle-ager making comics, politically incorrect mother with a couple of kids in college.

Clearly there was a lot more to taking a good picture than I thought.

Photography by Jen Davis

Six years later, I called Jen again when the French edition of my breast cancer memoir (Nénés Chéris) was coming out. This time when Jen pulled up she had transformed into a pro. Things came out of the back of her car and unfolded into bigger things, and there were umbrellas and lights and it was impressive as hell.

A spill of summer light came through a break in the untamed greenery along the driveway. Jen pointed to it and said,“Try standing there.”

A perfect shot. It glowed. My flea market jewelry sparkled. I was the same, but different. I looked like a lady. A little less mischief, a little more wisdom. Jen had known just how to catch me, light me, frame me. I was beginning to think her job involved a lot of the same calculations I make at my drawing table as I assess out how best to depict a character in a comix story.

Photography by Jen Davis

Time improves our books, but not so much the physical envelope from which they come. And you want to make sure your jacket photo still looks like you because otherwise when you show up at events your audience is looking at you and thinking: “Who the hell is THAT old bag?”

This is why, four years later, I called Jen to see if she would take head shot number three.

She rolled up at my house and buckled a gunslinger’s belt of professional doodads around her waist as she listened to me describe my new book. (It’s a gumbo of comics and recipes, all spelling disaster, with the spiritual understanding that is the sweetener for all empty-nesters.)

Then Jen said, “I saw these logs as I was driving in,” (Our yard still in preleaf.) “There was some sun.” (There hadn’t been any in months.) “Can you take your sweater off?” I’d layered myself like Miss Marple. “And this scarf.” Then: “Can you sit down here? Do you need a hand?”

“Not yet I don’t,” I said as I plopped into place, “though you may have to pull me up when we’re done.”

The sharp wind hissed through my dress and lifted my thinning hair. The trees gathered around me and under me, enfolding all the phases of life in their wrinkled bark.

And that’s the shot.

Photography by Jen Davis

Jen has seen me as I have become what I have become. And I have seen her grow so much as she has depicted me. Largely though her, I have learned to appreciate the ART of photography. And the sense of community we get when we buy things or services from one another. It’s a great privilege to know the person we are buying from and beyond rewarding to forge a relationship with them through the years and across all of life’s adventures.

That’s what, in this picture, as I look back at the moment when Jen shot it, really made me smile.