He bought them tickets and they headed towards the galleries, pausing in front of a large, bright photo collage that stood eight feet tall near the elevator banks.
“I’m not sure what I think of these. Photo collages made of smaller photos,” Sarah said.
“They’re the fast-food version of art,” Ren replied. “They’re a way to pretend you’re saying something deep while having nothing to say.”
Sarah smiled at his familiar decisiveness. Ren always gave you something to react to, even if he was usually overstating the case.
“Do you still do photography?” she asked him. “For fun, I mean.”
“I do so much shooting and writing for my job that I don’t have the time. I should get back into it.”
They wandered the galleries together. It was nice talking to him like this, pointing out favorite images and artistic choices.
“Look at this. The tilt shift lens,” she said, noting one photo of a mountain town. “I love that effect, where everything looks like a miniature toy.”
“Tilt shift is gimmicky.” There was a faint twinkle in his eye; he knew he was baiting her.
“It’s a tool, like any other tool.”
“A tool for being gimmicky.”
“I have plenty of examples that it’s not,” Sarah said.
“Tilt shift and fish-eye lenses have no subtlety.”
“Sit down, Durand. I’m pulling out my phone.”
They sat down together on a bench in the middle of the gallery, and she pulled out her cell phone and did a quick image search until she found a photo of a rushing waterfall made with a tilt shift lens and long exposure. The lens and shutter choice made the waterfall look endless and dreamy, its rushing white foam like the ghostly train of a Victorian wedding dress.
“That’s nice,” Ren agreed. “But only because of the long exposure.”
“All right. Hold on. I’m finding something else.”
She could feel him smiling as she pulled up images of tilt shift lenses used in spooky, haunting photography of graveyards, with faint figures appearing in the mist.
“Okay, that’s interesting,” he agreed. “But I’m sort of done with black and white. It has become so self-serious. Nobody should be allowed to take black and white photos anymore.”
“You make these broad pronouncements just to get me annoyed,” she said. “Cartier-Bresson was not self-serious.” Cartier-Bresson was one of the first artists that she and Ren agreed on back in school; his gorgeous shots of Paris were popular on postcards and dorm room posters, and Sarah had put up one of his prints as soon as she arrived at school.
“Cartier-Bresson was a sentimentalist,” Ren said.
“Now you’re deliberately being pretentious.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, smirking a little. “I should have said, people should earn the right to shoot black and white photography. It should be like a driver’s license. You have to pass a test.”
“I’ll have all photographers submit their work to you for approval.”
“Please do. If someone takes a self-portrait in profile, looking away moodily with half their face in shadow, they lose the right to shoot black and white photography for a year.”
“There go half my headshots.”
He laughed.
“You know, Paola hates museums,” Ren said as they stood up. “She doesn’t understand the point of art unless you’re going to buy it. She’ll only go to the museum gift shop.”
“I suppose that’s practical. What’s the point of looking at art if you can’t own it?”
He smiled. “She told me she only puts up with me because she can tolerate looking at me.”
