We were tense, we hadn’t spoken all day. The bar had a photo booth. “True Photographs,” it promised. Gelatin silver prints, the product of light and chemistry on silver salts. Heliographs. Sun pictures. A nineteenth-century portrait studio, mechanized and coin operated. An anachronism in a Brooklyn bar. For four moments we were giddy, sitting close as the flash flashed and the shutter clicked. For five mute minutes we listened as our likeness moved through developer, stop bath, and fixer somewhere inside the machine. The finished “true photographs” did not record that we were tense, we hadn’t spoken all day.
David Lowe is a Queens, New York, writer and artist. He received his MFA from Pratt Institute and is a contributing member of Woodside Writers. Instagram: @1890census