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Sitting It Out
by Nigel Ryan
This article originally appeared in Al-Ahram
Weekly, Jan. 4-10, 2001, and is republished here by kind permission of the
newspaper.
The foyer was theatrical, though in a low key, end of
pier, out of season kind of way. It was modern, in that movie theatre sense -
clean lines, curves, even a hint of the proscenium in the pieces of faded red
velvet that ran around the top of the curved desk like inverted crenellations.
It had obviously been designed, thought out, was there to make an impression.
It is simply that everything will become dust-laden in this city. Red velvet fades
to a dusky pink and the once elegant blond wood will stain and darken. Nothing,
in any case, dates as much as the ultra-fashionable and the foyer to Van-Leo's
downtown studio had certainly aspired to that.
It was designed by Andre de Riz, a friend of the photographer
and erstwhile leader of Cairo's one-time band of surrealists. A gratuitous piece
of information, perhaps, but one that hints at the richer stories that lie beneath
the dust. Like so many corners of Cairo, Van-Leo's studio on 26th of July Street
can barely contain the scent of better times. Seven years ago, when I arrived
for what would turn out to be the first of three sittings for the photographer,
it had obviously been living off those memories for at least a decade or two.
The studio now is closed, though Van-Leo himself has become
something of a celebrity and is feted accordingly. Several books of his photographs
have now been produced. Last month he received a Prince Klaus Fund Award, presented
at the opening of an exhibition of his photographs at the Townhouse Gallery. Nor
was the exhibition Van-Leo's first: he had earlier been showcased at the Sony
Gallery, to which I contributed an essay to the catalogue, and has been exhibited
in Europe.
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Sitting for Van-Leo turned out to be a complicated process.
The studio itself, as down at heel as the foyer, and with the same unmistakable
odor of better times just beyond recent memory, included a small, circular, slightly
raised area, the stage on which the sitter would be placed while Van-Leo played
around with the big, old-fashioned lights. Before taking center-stage, though,
customers would be invited to leaf through box after box of portraits, in search
of something they might think appropriate for themselves. Famous faces - everyone
who was anyone, it seems, at some point passed through Van-Leo's studio - punctuated
by the unknown, and all dramatically lit in a black and white, silver screen,
matinee idol/starlet 1940s manner.
There were any number of tricks that the photographer was willing
to play. You could appear shrouded in black, your head protruding through a hole
in the cloth, with Vaseline rubbed into your face and sand scattered over the
surface, giving the texture of rough-hewn granite. You were asked, politely, which
was your best side, and the photographer expected you to know. The sitter, he
assumed, had at least some idea of the face he or she wished to present: the more
stage props you included, the more costume changes you brought, then all the better.
This freezing of an image, it was tacitly, though firmly, implied, is not to be
taken lightly. It is a serious business, this fixing of your face.
You should have your photograph taken properly at least every
ten years, so that you remember how you looked, Van-Leo would intone, as he began
the time-consuming business of doing exactly the opposite, of taking a picture
of a person that perhaps you might resemble, but only on your best days, and then
only roughly. Lighting would be worked out meticulously, poses struck and held,
and then readjusted. The real work, though, took place beyond the studio, and
after developing, while Van-Leo pored over the negatives - he always used the
widest available film - touching up and painting out anything he found unsightly.
Eventually you would be called back to the studio, to select
from one of four prints the photographer had deemed satisfactory. This was the
final choice: whatever you selected would be blown up, to poster size, the object
for which you would pay. The negative remained with Van-Leo, your carried only
the print away, to do with as you wish.
My choice out of the four images presented did not, I think,
meet with Van-Leo's approval. He registered a faint frown, asked if I was sure,
and then nodded. A week later I returned to pick up the print.
Several months passed before, one day, and much to my surprise,
I picked up the telephone to hear Van-Leo's voice, asking me to drop in at the
studio. This I did the following afternoon, and after pouring a glass of cognac
- he was in celebratory mood - he produced two enlargements of what I suspect
was the print he had hoped I would choose. An unexpected gift, and one for which
I remain grateful.
The recent interest in Van-Leo's work is gratifying, and deserved.
I often find myself wondering, though, given the size of film he used, and his
sense of lighting, just what the images looked like before he began on the process
of removal, of eradicating those annoying little blemishes that did not fit in
with the photographer's sense of the proper.
Van-Leo enjoys telling the story of his session with Taha Hussien.
The result of this sitting has become the single most used image of Hussein. And
it was, Van-Leo claims, the only time he had felt perfectly happy with the first
shot taken. Hardly surprising, this, for what better subject could this particular
photographer have than a blind man, someone who did not know how he looked, let
alone how he might wish to look.
Van-Leo's photography - in so many ways an exercise in flattery
- worked best for those immune to flattery. An odd paradox, this, from someone
who knew all about the deceits of which the camera, that most consummate of liars,
is capable.
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