Cult of Jef

I don’t like hav­ing my pic­ture taken. It’s some­where on a pref­er­ence scale between a lucid colonoscopy and giv­ing birth to a blue whale with only half a Claritin-D as an anesthetic.

For the record, my dis­like of hav­ing my pic­ture taken is not because I think vil­lagers will chase me with torches and dogs to the wind­mill that they will set on fire to destroy me; I’ve just seen very few pic­tures of myself that seem nat­ural.  They always appear stiff, posed, and noth­ing that resem­bles my per­son­al­ity comes through. Hon­estly, how can a pic­ture rep­re­sent you with­out your per­son­al­ity?  It’s like meet­ing some­one with no soul.

Per­haps it’s because at an early age we are snatched from our lives in motion to stand in place, pull our lips back to reveal as much teeth and gums as humanly pos­si­ble, and then shout out a word for cur­dled milk–CHEESE!

About the time we become teenagers, we are con­di­tioned to comb/brush our hair, apply lip balm/lipstick/makeup, and attempt to look cool at the sight of a cam­era.  Instead, we often give the impres­sion that we’re abus­ing a con­trolled sub­stance.  If you don’t believe me, look at any teenager’s Face­book page.

As adults, we uncon­sciously suck in our stom­achs any time any one men­tions the word cam­era.  After being sub­jected to numer­ous sexy bill­boards, mag­a­zine ads, and T.V. com­mer­cials, it seems impos­si­ble for men to have our pic­ture taken with­out six-pack abs, a few days growth of beard, and a vul­gar tat­too of a tribal design or Japan­ese sym­bol on an upper arm, shoul­der, or chest.

Last year it became appar­ent to me that I needed a professional-looking pho­to­graph when I was asked to sup­ply one for a poetry read­ing I par­tic­i­pated in.  Since I’m usu­ally behind the cam­era, the only pic­ture I could find of myself was one I took of my shadow on a wall at the North Car­olina Aboretum.

“Is that the best you could do?” a friend asked.

“It’s the only pic­ture I have of myself,” I said.  “Does it exude a mys­te­ri­ous, artis­tic personality?”

“No, it looks like an upload to Guys with iPhones from a burn victim.”

I imme­di­ately began a search to find a pho­tog­ra­pher.  For­tu­nately, I dis­cov­ered that one of our cus­tomers at the book­store, Vyvyan L. Hughes, trained with a fash­ion pho­tog­ra­pher in San Fran­cisco.  I checked out her web­site and fell in love with her use of nat­ural light in her work.  Yes, I thought, this is real.  This is what I want.

When I met with Vyvyan, she asked me what I was try­ing to show with my pho­tographs, I told her that I didn’t want some soul­less por­trait of myself–I wanted to reveal the real me.  She asked me who the real me was, and I was at a loss.  I real­ized that there was more to the process than look­ing at the cam­era and smil­ing.  I write a humor blog, but I didn’t want a pic­ture of myself with an arrow stuck through my head or wear­ing Grou­cho Marx glasses.

I e-mailed sev­eral friends and asked them to send me the first three words that came to mind when they thought of me.  Surely, I could iden­tify a pat­tern that might be help­ful to com­mu­ni­cate to Vyvyan who I am.  The results were sur­pris­ing.  Many peo­ple put a lot of thought into their responses and sent heart­felt mes­sages like:  You’re such a good lis­tener; you’re so wise; you’re so kind.  I thought to myself, Well, that’s very mov­ing, but how do I get across in a pho­to­graph that I’m a good lis­tener, wise, and kind?  Should she get a snap­shot of me feed­ing home­less peo­ple or read­ing to orphans?  I started to get a few ideas.

Then I asked Jeff for his opin­ion.  “You should take your pic­ture in a leather jacket in front of a dis­tressed wall, because you’re edgy.  You’re not your mama’s Erma Bombeck, you know.”  And with that com­ment, all of my ideas seem to deflate like a rogue bal­loon, fly­ing hel­ter skel­ter around the room until they petered out at my feet.

Vyvyan arrived the next morn­ing with her cam­era.  I told her I really didn’t have any ideas.  I just knew that the major­ity of my friends described me as funny, cre­ative, and play­ful.  “Do you know how we can work those qual­i­ties into the pho­tographs?” I asked.

So Vyvyan took me out into the back­yard and began talk­ing to me as she took pic­tures.  We tried lots of dif­fer­ent ideas: stand­ing, sit­ting, seri­ous, smil­ing, with grop­ing a wooden Indian.  (Don’t ask!)  And then I had an idea.

It dawned on me that since I write about ‘80s music, why not incor­po­rate it into a pic­ture?  We went upstairs to the mas­ter bed­room, which had great light­ing from the sky­light.  I spread out the record sleeves of some of most iconic 12″ sin­gles from the ‘80s.  I lay down on top of the record sleeves and Vyvyan went to work.  “OOh, that’s yummy,” she cooed.

“Vyvyan, you can’t say stuff like or I’m going to crack up.”

“Let the music lift you up, dahling!”

After we fin­ished, we pulled the images up on my iMac and took a peek.  I was blown away.  We took almost 300 pic­tures and I was amazed at the qual­ity.  We had plenty of the stan­dard pro­fes­sional headshots–smiling and serious–but the pic­tures with the record sleeves really pro­jected the words  the major­ity of my friends had used:  funny, cre­ative, and play­ful.  For once, I had a pic­ture that pro­jected my per­son­al­ity.  Mis­sion accomplished!

When I had time to sit down and spend some time going through the images more closely, I encoun­tered a new obsta­cle.  When I looked at the pic­tures of myself, I couldn’t see myself.  In one pho­to­graph, I looked just like my mother.  In another pic­ture, I saw only my dad.  The faster I scrolled through the images, the more I real­ized that I couldn’t find myself, any­more.  It slowly dawned on me that as I’ve aged, I’ve begun to see my par­ents on my face more and more.  That might not sound like a prob­lem to most peo­ple.  How­ever, after fin­ish­ing a stren­u­ous work­out or long run, when I look in the mir­ror, I want to see a pil­lar of manly sex­i­ness star­ing back at me–not the 65-year-old woman who gave birth to me.

“Do you think maybe I have some sort of strange pho­bia and I’m going to need some bizarre treat­ment that requires elec­troshock ther­apy?” I asked my friend Joan.

“You’re prob­a­bly just not used to see­ing pic­tures of your­self,” Joan said.  “Why don’t you put the pic­tures where you can see them and you’ll even­tu­ally get used to them.”

Joan’s advice struck a chord with me, so I uploaded one of Vyvyan’s images to my iPhone and made it my wall­pa­per.  It’s just a pic­ture of me smil­ing at the cam­era, noth­ing spe­cial.  At first, I avoided myself when I picked up my phone.  In time, though, I began to grow more com­fort­able with look­ing back at myself and I began to see me again.  This morn­ing when I picked up my iPhone, I looked myself in the eye and said, “Wel­come back, old pal.”  I could see myself again.  Granted, it’s a 44-year-old self, but that face is no longer a stranger–I rec­og­nize it as a friend.

Now, I just have to fig­ure out which one of those 300 pic­tures to use.  Stay tuned …