In the first sitting the subject turns toward a window that has been painted a fraction too bright, so the face is lit by a decision rather than by weather. In the second, a shoulder occupies the place where a likeness was commissioned to be. In the third, and this is the one I trust, the sitter looks at a point just beside the lens, as if listening to a person we cannot see. None of these are photographs I can send you to a museum to confirm. They were made in a hired room by a painter who does not yet keep a website, and I describe them because the refusal is precise. A portrait that looks away is not empty of relation. It relocates the relation to the edge of the frame, where many of the truest ones live.#
This is an excerpt. The complete piece is in the print and digital edition of Issue 03.