The Photograph
by J Pascutazz
A black and white photograph of a child at his mother’s knee. The picture was published in the local newspaper. This was a copy of the original. Likely the photographer’s first published work. And the child’s first glimpse of the circus. The mother’s upper body is cropped out of the picture. She is only present in the photograph’s universe from the waist down. How do we know we’re at the circus? Other chairs, other bodies lacking upper portions. The child was there looking out from the center of the frame. But he doesn’t remember the event now except through the medium of the photo. The mother will explain it to him later. “We were at the circus, honey,” she’ll say, “but you weren’t that interested in the show. I thought there was something a little off about you that day.” A document of small town life of that era, the photograph’s banality is shattered by the intensity of the child’s gaze. The child looks straight into the camera. The gaze is too focused for a child of that age and limited experience. The hard stare haunts the viewer. You want to look away but the eyes draw you back in. If you are a man your eyes drift from the boy’s face to trace for a moment the sumptuous curve of his mother’s exposed thigh. But the utter vulnerability of the child’s eyes draw you back against your will. He reminds you of that famous National Geographic cover with the girl from an exotic faraway land torn apart by the unimaginable horrors of war. Eyes that somehow manage to contain the limitless scale of cosmic suffering. If you are a woman you can’t look away from the child. You want to go to him and soothe away what you intuitively know is making him look at you as if he could see you right now, as if his gaze was so concentrated he could look through a window in time and space and freeze your soul to him forever. Those eyes will be his best feature and will draw to him legions of women like you. (When the boy is older his religious friends will tell him his eyes are portals of demons.) He grasps his mother’s hand to keep himself from being sucked into the maelstrom of noise and color. His mother’s arm and hand are a lifeline back to the familiar safe world of house yard and family he has known so far in his brief life. (Later when he leaves home, the mother will send him a crazy quilt with the photograph ironed onto it with the caption: “For my son so that he knows he can always hold his mother’s hand.” The quilt will come with an extensible rod so it can be hung up.) For the child the circus is too much new information. He’s still too open to remove himself enough from these archetypal acts of amusement and danger to relax and enjoy the show. Like the child, we never get to see the circus. Like the child, we stay huddled on the floor at our mother’s plump yet attractive knee—safe for now. But, just outside the picture frame, a circus must be going on. Bears must be balancing on balls. Lion tamers cracking whips. Clowns riding miniature unicycles while juggling chainsaws and machetes. High in the airy expanse of canvas, a thin man in a shiny leotard with a long stick walks across a tightrope suspended between two poles. The audience gasps at the spotlit man on high, afraid at any moment he might fall. And outside the billowing flaps of the great bigtop itself (though we cannot see it here) a world must be going on, performing its own magical feats of comedy and daring, with only the flimsiest, most symbolic net to save it.
A black and white photograph of a child at his mother’s knee. The picture was published in the local newspaper. This was a copy of the original. Likely the photographer’s first published work. And the child’s first glimpse of the circus. The mother’s upper body is cropped out of the picture. She is only present in the photograph’s universe from the waist down. How do we know we’re at the circus? Other chairs, other bodies lacking upper portions. The child was there looking out from the center of the frame. But he doesn’t remember the event now except through the medium of the photo. The mother will explain it to him later. “We were at the circus, honey,” she’ll say, “but you weren’t that interested in the show. I thought there was something a little off about you that day.” A document of small town life of that era, the photograph’s banality is shattered by the intensity of the child’s gaze. The child looks straight into the camera. The gaze is too focused for a child of that age and limited experience. The hard stare haunts the viewer. You want to look away but the eyes draw you back in. If you are a man your eyes drift from the boy’s face to trace for a moment the sumptuous curve of his mother’s exposed thigh. But the utter vulnerability of the child’s eyes draw you back against your will. He reminds you of that famous National Geographic cover with the girl from an exotic faraway land torn apart by the unimaginable horrors of war. Eyes that somehow manage to contain the limitless scale of cosmic suffering. If you are a woman you can’t look away from the child. You want to go to him and soothe away what you intuitively know is making him look at you as if he could see you right now, as if his gaze was so concentrated he could look through a window in time and space and freeze your soul to him forever. Those eyes will be his best feature and will draw to him legions of women like you. (When the boy is older his religious friends will tell him his eyes are portals of demons.) He grasps his mother’s hand to keep himself from being sucked into the maelstrom of noise and color. His mother’s arm and hand are a lifeline back to the familiar safe world of house yard and family he has known so far in his brief life. (Later when he leaves home, the mother will send him a crazy quilt with the photograph ironed onto it with the caption: “For my son so that he knows he can always hold his mother’s hand.” The quilt will come with an extensible rod so it can be hung up.) For the child the circus is too much new information. He’s still too open to remove himself enough from these archetypal acts of amusement and danger to relax and enjoy the show. Like the child, we never get to see the circus. Like the child, we stay huddled on the floor at our mother’s plump yet attractive knee—safe for now. But, just outside the picture frame, a circus must be going on. Bears must be balancing on balls. Lion tamers cracking whips. Clowns riding miniature unicycles while juggling chainsaws and machetes. High in the airy expanse of canvas, a thin man in a shiny leotard with a long stick walks across a tightrope suspended between two poles. The audience gasps at the spotlit man on high, afraid at any moment he might fall. And outside the billowing flaps of the great bigtop itself (though we cannot see it here) a world must be going on, performing its own magical feats of comedy and daring, with only the flimsiest, most symbolic net to save it.