Private Lessons

I'm twenty-eight years old, owner of a small but successful art gallery in Brooklyn, and I'm about to take private photography lessons from a man who knew my father.

Marcus Kane. Forty-five. One of the most celebrated portrait photographers of our generation. His work hangs in museums, graces magazine covers, captures something essential about his subjects that other photographers miss.

He's also gorgeous in that way men get when they stop trying—silver threading through dark hair, lines around his eyes that deepen when he smiles, hands that look like they know exactly what they're doing.

My father collected his work obsessively before he died five years ago. Our house was full of Marcus Kane photographs—haunting black and white portraits, intimate studies of light and shadow, images that felt like they could see into your soul.

I never met Marcus then. He was just a name on expensive prints, an artist my father admired from a distance.

Now I'm standing in his studio in Manhattan, watching him set up his camera equipment, and trying to remember how to breathe normally.

"You said on the phone you want to learn photography," he says, his voice deeper than I expected, with a slight rasp that does things to my stomach I shouldn't be feeling about my instructor. "What's driving that? The gallery?"

"Partly. I sell photographs but I don't understand the process. I want to know what makes a good image, what separates technically competent from genuinely moving."

"That's the eternal question." He looks up from his camera, and his eyes—dark blue, almost navy—meet mine with an intensity that makes my breath catch. "And you think I can teach you that?"

"I think if anyone can, it's you."

"Flattered." He smiles slightly. "But be warned—I'm a demanding teacher. I don't believe in coddling students or telling them what they want to hear. If your work is shit, I'll tell you it's shit."

"I wouldn't expect anything less."

"Good." He gestures to the camera on the tripod. "Then let's start. Tell me—what do you see when you look through a lens?"

I move to the camera, peer through the viewfinder at the scene he's set up—a simple still life, fruit in a bowl, window light streaming across a weathered table.

"I see... objects. Composition. Light and shadow."

"That's what everyone sees. I asked what you see." He steps closer, close enough that I can smell his cologne—something woody and expensive. "Look again. This time, don't think about what's supposed to be there. Think about what story it's telling."

I look again, trying to see beyond the obvious. "Loneliness? The way the light isolates the fruit, makes it seem separate from everyt...