The Photograph

Forty-one attempts were made. This is all five accounts of the same afternoon.

FRANKLIN

Let me begin by saying that I understood the assignment immediately.

A portrait. Of me. Taken in the front room, in the good light, by a member of staff who had cleared her entire afternoon for the purpose. And I want to be generous here, because the others were also permitted to be in it, and that was my doing. I have never been a small animal about these things.

I took the centre of the couch. Obviously. The centre is where the subject goes; this is not a matter of opinion, it is composition.

Then she said, “Franklin, sit.”

I was already sitting.

I had been sitting for some time. To be instructed to perform an act one is demonstrably in the middle of performing is not a direction, it is a slight, and I responded to it in the only way available to a creature of standing, which was to stand up.

She moved me back. I moved. She moved me back. I moved. And I want the record to show that at no point was I being difficult. I was negotiating. There is a difference and she has never once grasped it.

On the thirty-fourth attempt I was placed on the back of the large yellow one, which I regarded as an acceptable compromise, and from which I delivered what I am confident was the finest work of my career.

COOKIE

I was on the arm of the couch before any of this began.

I want that established, because the account that has formed in this household is that I “joined in,” and I did not join in. I was already there. They assembled around me.

The proceedings lasted fifty minutes. I was present for all of them.

At intervals I was asked to look at a small black rectangle. I declined. I looked approximately four inches to the left of it, steadily, for the entire afternoon.

That was deliberate.

ABBY DOG

Oh, this was a wonderful day.

I didn’t know what we were doing and I still don’t, entirely, but she got out the thing she holds up to her face and she kept saying all our names in the happy voice, one after another, over and over. Franklin, Cookie, Abby, Daisy, Millie, Franklin, Cookie. And you don’t get that. Not usually. Usually it’s one name at a time and somebody’s in trouble.

Everyone was in the room. Everyone was on the furniture at once, which never happens.

She kept saying “Abby, look here, look here,” and pointing at the thing, and I did try, I promise I tried, but she was right behind it with her whole face doing something lovely, and I’m sorry but given a choice between the thing and the person holding the thing, I’m going to look at the person. Every time. I’d do it again.

Apparently I’m a blur in all of them.

That’s alright. I was having a very good time, and I expect that’s what a blur is.

DAISY

I was too far forward.

I could feel it. I was right out at the front where everybody could see me and I kept thinking there’s no reason for me to be there, so I went back a bit, just a bit, and she said “Daisy, come forward, sweetheart,” and I came forward, and then I was too far forward again, so I...

Sorry. I did that about nine times. I know I did.

I’m not very good at the middle of things.

Franklin got put on my back around the halfway point, which settled it, because once he’s on you can’t move anyway. He sat up very straight. He always sits up very straight when there’s an audience, and I don’t say anything about it, because he’s little and it’s his afternoon.

She said, “Daisy, he’s fine, you can relax.”

He was fine. He was on my back. That’s where he goes.

MILLIE

She asked me to get on the couch, so I got on the couch.

I sat at the end, facing the way she was standing, because that was the way she was standing. Then I stayed there.

The pug went up and down roughly thirty times. The cat looked slightly to the left of the camera for fifty minutes, on purpose. The small bearded one spent the entire afternoon looking at a person instead of a lens and enjoying herself enormously. The big yellow one reversed out of frame and apologised for it, over and over, until somebody parked a pug on her, which is the only thing that has ever made her sit still.

I didn’t move.

Nobody told me not to. It just seemed like what was being asked for.

She gave up at forty-one and kept the last one.

It’s on the fridge now. In it, Franklin is upright on Daisy’s back with his chin raised like a man being painted. Daisy is mid-apology. Abby is a cream-coloured smear with one ear in focus. Cookie is looking at something four inches to the left of everybody’s life.

And on the end of the couch, square to the camera, in focus, is one black dog looking directly down the lens.

She is like that in all forty-one.

Nobody in this house has ever noticed.

I was ready.