Photogirl 1

Once there may have have been a certain heroism in the city; a satisfaction of construction, creation out of which the city grew, that first creative moment, the first building to rise above the single-storeyed miscellany, the grids of street and their namings - old kings and villains and professions.

But now the city grew, carried on its own inertia, plunging ceaselessly, into the future, and there was nothing great or grand in this senseless growth.

Its businesses ran with the sere expectation of profits, knowing full well that such things came at the expense of jobs lost, efficiency reduced -- for it is better to mollify efficiency than profit(they are not the same thing). They cowed their staff, set unreasonable targets (so they could paint them on their employees) and demanded to know why these targets were not met.

There was a tyranny of cranes, of dust and machinery, of building pits caged in steel and lit at night with a dreadful brightness.

She thought it beautiful. And almost every waking hour -- of which there were many -- she sought to capture it.

She brought the camera at an op shop, quiet cheaply, not even expecting it to work, but it did.

It was the end of the age of film.

People wanted to know why she took pictures in such an archaic way, seemed offended by it, or sorry for her. But it did not worry her. In fact that was the one thing that did not disturb her.

She was a mass of contradictions, calamities had made her, whittled away, until she stood, a new sprung thing made of old doubts and fears.

She lived alone with her camera and her dark room, and her collection of sharp things, which she used to cut. And she would watch the blood splutter and blubber from her. And she would watch the blood splash. And she would feel the hurt that she had made - all by herself - and the sometimes, if she was not careful the awful, scary terrible scar, that in a minute or two would have her calling a friend, or the ambulance, but for a moment was pure bliss, because she had made it, had released her demons a little, had watched them splatter, and spatter; bloody tears neither miserable nor joyous upon her clean floor.

And no matter what happened afterwards, she would have that moment - swift as it was to fade - and it was like a drug to her, and it tracked her skin as terribly as any drug.

But she had that moment.

There was always some new anxiety. Her lovers - and she took many - would laugh at them, before succumbing to their own. Perjure is a city of anxieties.

The only time she was truly unaffected, artless, was when she peered through the viewfinder, making art stripped the mask from her face.