Eight Girls Taking Pictures by Whitney Otto

of practical experience, and the sort of confidence that is really only possible in a twenty-one-year-old girl who has not yet known failure. It was this fearlessness that convinced her father to stake his daughter in the winter of 1914, when she was the youngest female photographer in London.
    “How long have you been here?” asked George Clifton, making himselfat home on the pink sofa, unaware that his position was almost identical to the one on the park bench the first time he had waved to Amadora.
    “Since the week after we went to supper. Three months, four days, and two hours,” she said, “if I were keeping track.”
    “I wasn’t aware that you thought enough of our supper to keep track,” he said, his body losing the relaxed, expansive pose as it closed in on itself.
    “You would’ve known if you’d rung me.”
    George got up and crossed over to a number of black-and-white photographs hung from a thin rope, like laundry. She could see the awkwardness again, the discomfort. He said, “You’ve been busy.”
    “Not yet,” she said, standing beside him. “I have to appear as if I have clients in order to attract clients.”
    “Who’s this?” George pointed to a portrait of a girl, maybe sixteen, posing with a large, long-haired dog wearing a wreath of hand-tinted flowers.
    “That’s Violette. My sister.”
    “And this?” He pointed to a picture of a young woman in a sparkling ball gown, her hair done up in an elaborate style.
    “That would be Violette.”
    “Hmm. Quite different,” he said, comparing the two photographs.
    “That’s the point,” said Amadora.
    It was then he stared harder at the remaining pictures, all of young women or girls, hair down or pinned back; in casual clothes, formal clothes, even a beautiful robe; one sat primly on the pink velvet sofa, another played with a parrot, while another clasped a rose in her mouth, or held a glass orb, or rested a hand on a large library globe. They were smiling, thoughtful, serious, laughing. “Violette?” he said.
    “One must be resourceful.”
    “And your sign outside— Madame Amadora—Portrait Photographer —more resourcefulness?”
    “I wanted to stand apart. I’m not the only one taking pictures in London.”
    “If the photography doesn’t work out, perhaps you can tell futures.”
    “Or run a house of ill repute.”
    “You have more imagination than that.”
    “More than you know.”
    “Actually, I quite like the new name. Doesn’t truly suit you at the moment, but I suspect one day it will.”
    “I suppose it’s by great good luck I’ve adopted an art-trade-profession-science that, like myself, is not properly grown-up.”
    “Amadora,” he began, “I wanted—I wanted to bring you something—to wish you well—” He shyly handed her a narrow box.
    When they had gone to dinner (“Three months, four days, and two hours”), they had had a wonderful time. George Clifton was twenty-four years old; a reporter for The Guardian, he was assigned all manner of random stories, covering a variety of topics, many of them, to him, pure fluff. He didn’t want to be a features reporter as much as he wanted to write a serious, political column. One of the weightier subjects he had been allowed to write about was the recent conflict over women’s rights. He absolutely supported the vote and thought the government’s dealings with many of the suffragettes were despicable. Saying as much was the very thing that had forced him back onto light human interest stories.
    But he told none of this to Amadora, saying only that he was a reporter who longed to be a playwright.
    When he began telling her stories about his job, his subjects, and his life, she noticed a self-deprecation that had been absent in their previous encounters. He asked her questions, encouraged her opinions. He himself was an easier laugh than she had imagined. He kidded her. He was, in short, one thing and another and Amadora found herself completely charmed