Body as Rebellion

I.

Every session begins with lighting tests. Tentative shutter clicks as you shift how shadow drapes the nose, the right ear, a corner. More shutter clicks. (Is the battery charged?) Absent-minded compositions guiding where light, honeyed and gleaming, sits. To soften a clavicle, the wrinkle of a smile. To color silence in measured breaths. I exhale for the photographic encounter: In a sixtieth of a second, my finger finds a button — click — the lights flood