The Museum of Extraordinary Things(39)

FOUR



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THE MAN WHO FELT NO PAIN


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I PLANNED to sell the watch I’d stolen as a boy to pay for Moses Levy’s funeral, but, as if it knew of my intent, it broke that very day. I wound the crown, and still it would not tell time. And so I kept it and instead sold the camera I had learned my craft upon, an American Optical. Moses had left me several other cameras, including his own ancient large-format wooden bellows camera whose images were developed as eighteen-by-twenty-four glass dry plates, and a Leica held together with tape that had an exquisite Petzval lens. From then on, I used these as my own. Moses’s favorite camera was the old battered one, oversized and heavy to carry around town. Someone else might have thought the camera I sold was the best of the bunch, but it wasn’t. A camera has its own eye, my mentor had told me. He insisted his could see the truth even when he’d begun to grow blind. I hoped it would do the same for me, for I was blind to much in this world.

Certainly I’d been blind when it came to Levy’s poor health and age. He’d told me of his bouts with pneumonia, which had weakened him, but he had such passion for his work I forgot how ill he was and ignored his labored breathing. I often accompanied him to meetings at 291, the gallery where Stieglitz showed photographs alongside paintings that seemed to come from a far-off universe, each unique and haunting. I stood in the back, an awkward apprentice, listening to the real photographers argue and talk. Once Moses went to shake Stieglitz’s hand and introduce himself. Stieglitz of course knew of him, although the rumors were that Moses Levy was dead. He had disappeared from the art world and from his compatriots. Perhaps he preferred these stories to the truth, and wished to keep secret the fact he made a living photographing brides and grooms at the marriage halls of the Lower East Side. His great work had been destroyed by officials in the Ukraine, who felt that Jewish artists were dangerous, rebels by nature, untrustworthy at best, demons at worst. He could not bring himself to think, let alone speak, about his lifetime’s lost work.

“Here’s one of the originals,” Stieglitz called out to those in the gallery. “One of our forefathers!”

Few paid attention. The mantle of genius had already been handed to younger men, such as Stieglitz himself, who quickly moved on to speak to his own admirers. Now Levy’s great work had been burned and forgotten, and there was little interest in him, even though many of his techniques had been taken up by these same young men. He was a master of the ambrotype print, in which the photographer is the conduit to the photograph, so that each is as individual as a painting, and later his use of silver nitrate or potassium cyanide to illuminate his landscapes had led the way for those who wished to take photography into the world of art. He had a unique toning technique that tinged some of his prints a golden color. Many of the younger men who gathered to speak of themselves and their work had no idea Levy had invented some of the processes they now used on a daily basis, nor did they care. I saw this was the way of the future, to leave the past behind as if it were a dream.



On the wall of Levy’s studio were the two remaining prints taken in the forests of the Ukraine. Trees so tall and wide they were true giants, their limbs saddened by the sorrows of the world, filled with the sepia shades of songbirds. It was much like the place where my father and I had camped when our village was destroyed. I had led him by the hand through the tall grass and the wild asters so that he would not lose himself and give up the life he no longer valued now that my mother was gone. We did not speak to each other in the forest, for fear of what we would say. We mourned in silence so that we would not curse the world we walked through. I saw owls in the locust trees and wondered if these creatures were the spirits of the dead, for there were so many murdered in our homeland there was not room enough for all of their ghosts. I half-believed they had turned into birds instead.

Moses Levy left me his lustrous silver nitrate prints. I had them on the wall of the studio, in frames I’d built myself of plain pine, for this cheap wood was the best I could afford. But the photographs hadn’t been treated properly in Moses’s travels across the continents, and they faded more each day. To avoid the ravaging effects of direct sunlight, I took to covering them with a white sheet, as people of the faith I’d left covered mirrors after a death in the family. I once believed this practice had arisen to make certain there was no vanity in a time of sorrow, but now I think it was so a man could not see his own hopelessness reflected in the glass.

Sometimes as darkness fell, I tore off the sheets so I could study the gift Moses had left me. The trees became illuminated in the fading light, struck by shades of yellow on some days, and at other times enveloped by the red glow that pours over Manhattan after sunset. When I stood there before the greatness of my teacher’s vision, I was reminded of the day I found my second life. I thought perhaps I did indeed have a purpose, and that purpose was to see the true beauty of the world and, like my teacher, to capture a single moment of that beauty.

And yet I was blinded to so much around me, stubborn and arrogant in the way many young men are. Could a blind man know beauty? I hadn’t noticed the milky film over my teacher’s eyes, nor had I realized the difficulty he had in taking the stairs in his last months on earth. To me he was indomitable, an icon who was more than human in both talent and virtue. I toted his equipment, as any apprentice would, but soon I was developing his negatives as well. He said it was so I could learn the skill of this process, but it was most likely he had me do this work because he could not stand steadily for more than a brief time. There were a few occasions when he was too tired to leave his bed, and I was forced to take wedding photographs alone. I’m sure the bridal parties were not pleased by my sour demeanor, but I did the job and learned to keep my mouth shut. I did not tell anyone to smile or to embrace—I photographed them as they were, delighted or terrified, brides who seemed too young to be married, and those who were grandmothers, grooms who shook with fear and those who rode triumphantly into the hall on the shoulders of their brothers and friends. There were occasions when my photographs were rejected by an angry bride or mother of the groom. I didn’t blame them. I showed them what I saw, and what I saw was not always pretty.