Camera Obscura

Mr. P made the darkroom in the back of his classroom all by himself. Although the closet was once full of random art supplies, old projects left behind from former students, and other miscellaneous storage items that no one was determined enough to find a true home for, Mr. P managed to turn it into something beautiful. All the way down to the painted-black walls and the soft red overhead light that was more like the faint glow of an Exit sign, he turned that closet into something really beautiful. Enticing, even.

We could really only fit five or six students into the darkroom to learn about how to properly develop a picture and which chemicals to use for how long, but more than often we would try to cram half of the class into the tiny room all at once. When Mr. P turned the red overhead light off when it was time to put his model film paper into the trays of chemicals, it was dark and silent enough that the only way we could remind ourselves that we were alive and not dreaming was by the warm bodies packed in between all of us, shifting nervously, claustrophobically. When the red light fizzled back on, barely visible, we all spread back out again. Pretended we weren’t huddling so close together in the dark. Pretended that none of us were wary of what that severe darkness might create.

Outside of the darkroom, back in the normal lighting that always hurt our eyes once reentering, our class was divided into the senior boys at the back table with their polo shirts, khaki shorts, American Eagle flip flops, and cell phones out on the tables; the round table in the middle of the room with the sophomores and juniors who played soccer together, drank together, and talked about the same girls together; and the table in the very front where all the stragglers were left to be called on when Mr. P needed an answer to his questions.

“Camera obscura, anyone know what that means? Anyone? How ’bout you, Sully, aren’t you one of those smart kids? Camera obscura, you’re good with words or something, right Sully? What do you think it means?” And his fast-paced talking is intense enough to make me want to crawl into his darkroom in the back of this classroom and hide forever and ever and ever. Crawl and hide away from the light that he throws on me, sitting at the front table of his room, like I am a piece of his film paper and I am supposed to capture something beautiful by giving him a good answer. But he’s forgetting that too much light will ruin the paper; too much light will make the photograph disappear. And even though I still remember on the first day of school when Mr. P told us that camera obscura means “dark chamber” in Latin, I shake my head and look down at my table and say no, I don’t know what it means. Sorry.

And the flap of doubled-over black duct tape slams shut in my face, covering the pinhole of light that shines onto the film paper of my skin, leaving permanent shadows that become crisp in the trays of chemicals in Mr. P’s darkroom. This is not the image that I wanted him to capture with the homemade pinhole cameras that we created in his classroom. This is not the photograph of my face that I wanted him to remember.

Mr. P told me that the thick tin can of dark chocolate fondue chips that I found in the back of a cupboard in my kitchen would make a “damn good pinhole camera.” He said, “Nice work, Sully,” as he placed it aggressively on my table in front of me after turning it over and over affectionately in his calloused hands. But then later that day, he shook his head and sighed heavily as he answered all of my badgering and needy questions about the black spray paint we used outside to fill the inside of our brought-in cans. Class was almost over and I was the only person left outside and he sent me back into the classroom all by myself so he could finish the spray painting that I was too ignorant to know how to use.

With the tiny pinholes that Mr. P cut into one side of each of our cans over the weekend and the flap of duct tape used to cover it, we huddled into his darkroom to fill our finished cameras with film paper. Outside, we find places to set our cameras up, hold the flap open, let the light in, let the shadow engrave itself, let the art commence.

“You must not be doing it right,” Mr. P told me when my photographs never develop. I pretended that this was the case. I pretended that he was right. I pretended that I was as ignorant and needy as those first few images that he must have already captured of my face. And when he stood beside me outside as I walked him through all of my steps: “I’m going to take a picture of this fence. I set the camera down right here. I keep one hand on top of the can to hold it steady like this. I hold the flap open for thirty seconds. 1, 2, 3, 4…” When he stood beside me in the darkroom as I walked him through the developing process: “The lights are all off. I put the film paper into this first tray of developer for thirty seconds. I use the tongs to move it around. I put the paper into the stop bath for two minutes. And there is no picture here. So there’s no use in putting it into the third tray of fixer.” All this time, I only want to crawl away and hide hide hide from him forever, bury myself in the corner of his darkroom where he will forget to ever check for stragglers. Lock myself in the thick tin dark chocolate fondue chip can that he spray painted black for me because I was too meager to do it myself.

I don’t like the attention of his tall and sturdy build under his lumberjack-style Carhartts and flannel, his strawberry blonde hair and well-kept goatee, or his fast-paced motor mouth with funny words like camera obscura repeated over and over with a little redneck twang. This man is too intense for me, running too fast, moving his hands and snapping photographs of this world around him with the mental camera in his mind. I don’t want to try to catch up.

“Maybe it’s just your camera, then,” Mr. P finally says. “Which really sucks. Because that was going to be a damn-good pinhole camera. What’d you do to it, Sully? Let’s have someone else try using it. Maybe there’s just something funky you’re doing with it.” And he’s out of the darkroom by now, moving on to look at the pictures of all the other students in my class while I hold the wet remains of my film paper that came out in sloppy yellowish blobs of nothingness.

I let the other stragglers from our front table use my camera. Let them fill it with film paper. Let them find a place to take a picture. Let them place their hands on top to steady the can, hold the flap open, count out loud for thirty seconds. I let them bring it to Mr. P’s darkroom and place it in the proper trays of chemicals as they watch their masterpieces develop right in front us. Crisp, clear pictures that Mr. P will later hang in a display case in the high school’s lobby, place the pictures right next to my thick tin dark chocolate fondue chip can that I could never even use.

“You must just be weird then,” Mr. P says after examining my classmates’ work that came from my pinhole camera. “You know, like those people who can’t wear watches because of the chemical imbalance in their blood that completely shuts the watches down. Are you one of those people? Do you stop time? Can you wear watches? I’m telling you, that’s gotta be what it is. Cuz this is a damn-good camera. I don’t know what else to tell you.”

I don’t think Mr. P saw me hold my wrist up as he sputtered every word that popped into his mind in that darkroom. I don’t know if he noticed the wristwatch on my left arm. I don’t know if he has ever seen me looking at it during class when he expects us to be taking notes of the silly words he says, like camera obscura. I’m not one of those people who can stop time; no, I’m the type of person who cherishes time and looks back on time and tries to capture time with words in writing. He should know. He should understand. He’s the artist here. Just because my photographs come out in yellow blobs of nothingness does not mean that I’m incapable of art, Mr. P.  And how many people do you know, who have handcrafted the watches on their wrists, searched through the cupboards in their kitchen for just the right pieces, just the right parts to make a damn-good wristwatch? Not being able to wear a watch is far different from not being able to use a tool that had so much thought put into it. So much excitement. So much potential. Starting out as something ugly. I thought I could turn it into something beautiful. I thought that my thick tin dark chocolate fondue can could be my own darkroom. A camera obscura. My own creation with black painted walls and the promise of confinement; the promise of a place to hide when the light was shining too brightly on my face. Overexposure.

I think that maybe I focus too much on the little things. On the tiny details, on the slight red glow above us in the darkroom, the way we all huddle so close, the way we all spread back out in the light. The American Eagle flip-flops. No one wants a picture of these things.

Mr. P, moving so fast, snap-snap-snapping mental photographs faster than I can breathe, left me in that darkroom, holding my homemade thick tin dark chocolate fondue chip can pinhole camera and the sloppy remains of my undeveloped photographs. I held the can close to me and stared at the trays of chemicals, finally obscured and alone in the severe darkness of this hidden room. Class was ending and people were leaving and I held my tin can so close until Mr. P had to come in and say, “Sully, what the hell are you doing? Class is over, get outta here.”

None of these images are what I wanted Mr. P to see. None of this, this feeble weakness, this failure, this frustration – none of this was meant for Mr. P’s camera. But still, these are his photographs, the art that he turned me into in his mind. I like to think that maybe he was able to find beauty in the fact that my final product was not so beautiful. But then I think that I was just another art project thrown into the back of that closet, the miscellaneous art supplies, the random storage items. He left me behind in that hidden room, a place where I desired for so long to be obscured in. Just another photograph tossed aside. And I still remember what camera obscura means, after all these years. I learned something from you, Mr. P. And I’m so sorry that I was never able to show you. I am so sorry that you will never know that there’s more to me than those few snapshots that you took.