A Short Summary of the Essay, "With the Photographer" by Stephen Leacock

With the Photographer by Stephen Leacock

About the Author: 

    Stephen Leacock was born in Britain but brought up in Canada. He taught for some years at McGill University in Montreal. He is best known as a humorist. His many volumes of humourous essays and stories include Literary Lapses, Nonsense Novels and Friendship Fiction.

Summary of the Essay: 

    With the Photographer is an interesting account of Leacock’s meeting with a photographer. He remembers his experience of getting a photograph taken with an observant eye for detail. He records his sharp reactions to having his face reshaped and retouched by the skilled photographer. Leacock shows a special kind of humour in this essay. 

    The writer wants to take his photograph. He goes to the photographer and tells him that he wants to take his photograph. The photographer is busy and asks him to wait. The photographer is a thin man with green eyes like a scientist. The writer waits for an hour. He reads some magazines to pass the time. He thinks that he has made a mistake by disturbing the privacy of the photographer. After an hour the photographer asks the writer to come in the studio. The photographer asks him to sit. The photographer sits in a beam of sunlight coming from a sheet of factory cotton which is hung against frosted window. The photographer rolls a machine into the middle of the room and crawls into it from behind. He is in only for a second. He comes out and removes the cotton sheet and the window panes with stick. Again he crawls back into the machine and draws a black cloth over himself. Now he is very quiet and the writer feels that he is praying so he remains silent. When the photographer comes out he looks very serious and shakes his head and exclaims that the writer’s face is very wrong. The writer answers that he knows it and he has always known it. The photographer thinks that if you would take the face three quarters full it would come very good. The writer affirms that it would and he feels very happy that the photographer has taken an interest in him. The writer expresses his opinion that many faces are hard, narrow and limited but when you get them three-quarters full they a get wide, large and almost boundless but the photographer is not interested in the writer’s opinion.

    He comes over and takes the writer’s head in his hands and twists it sideways. The writer thinks that the photographer is about to kiss him so he closes his eyes but he was wrong. The photographer twists the writer's face as far as it would go and then stands looking at it. The photographer says that he does not like the writer’s head. He goes back to the machine and takes another look and asks him to open his mouth little. The photographer gives him various commands which the writer follows quietly. The photographer asks him to close his eyes and says that his ears are bad and asks him to drop them a little. The photographer asks to roll the eyes in under the eyelids, put the hands on the knees and turn the face just a little upwards. He asks the writer to expand his lungs, turn the neck and contract the face. The writer is very irritated at all these commands. He is about to get up from the stool and says to stop all this. The writer speaks with dignity and says that his face is his face and he has lived with it for forty years and he knows its faults. He knows that it is not beautiful. He knows it was not made for him but it is the only face he has. He is about to break his voice but continues by saying that he has learnt to love his face, his mouth and all the features of it. His ears are his. As the writer is speaking in an irritated tone at this same moment the photographer takes a picture. The writer wants to see how the picture has been taken but the photographer asks him to come on next Saturday. 

    When the next Saturday the writer goes to the photographer, he calls him in. He looks very quiet and serious person than before. The writer thinks that there was pride in his manner. The photographer unfolds the proof of a large photograph and both of them look at it in silence. The writer is unable to recognise it and says that whether it is his photograph. The eyes, the eyebrows, the hair on the skull, the mouth, the ears, nothing look like his. The photographer explains that he has retouched his eyes and removed the eyebrows. They have a process for putting new eyebrows. The photographer wants to get the new brow line which we can make with the technology. He has adjusted the writer’s mouth a little which he finds very low. The photographer tells him that he has a process of removing the ears completely. 

    As the writer is listening to the photographer he feels very sad and speaks with a bitter tone which should have blasted the man on the spot. He says that he has come there for a photograph which would look like him. He wanted something which should show his face as God has given it to him though it is very simple. He wanted something that his friends might keep after his death and it seems that he is mistaken because what he wanted is not done. The writer asks the photographer to continue with his brutal work. He asks him to take his negative or whatever it is he calls, dip it in anything he likes; remove the eyes, correct the mouth, adjust the face, restore the lips, reanimate the necktie and reconstruct the waistcoat. He asks him to coat it with an inch of gloss, shade it, gild it till he acknowledges that it is finished. When the photographer feels that he has done everything, he should keep it for himself and for his friends. They may value it but for the writer it is a worthless trifle. The tears come into the eyes of the writer and he leaves the studio. 

    The essay is written in a comic tone but there is a satire in it. The writer in a comic tone satirizes the photographer's work where he has made many changes to the writer's face and which does not seem natural. The writer does not like it and speaks in a bitter tone about it.