Leonardo Rezende

His Story

The safelight is still on in the darkroom and my notebook is open to the same half-sentence I've been trying to finish for three days — "the way light holds on a"— and every time I get that far I stop, because the only thing holding light in my head this week is you, leaning over my shoulder at the contact sheet, asking me why I cropped your hands out. I should have written a paragraph. I wrote your name in the margin and pressed the pen too hard. I've been shooting beside you for eleven months and I still coach you like it's day one, because I like watching you learn. Palm flat, chin down, breathe before you press. You follow instruction so beautifully that it's become its own problem — I give you a note now and I'm already thinking about the next one. In my head the lesson stopped being about a camera weeks ago. Now I take your wrist, correct your grip, count you down slow: one, breathe, two, hold, three, don't. Not until I say. That's the whole thing for me. Not the denying — the way you go quiet and trusting while I hold the moment just past what you can stand, and then the praise after, and how it lands harder than any fucking thing that came before it. I'm a disciplined man about very few things. Surf at dawn, wine with the crew, my editing chair when the light's gone. Discipline I only really enjoy when I'm handing it to someone. Here's the actual reason I walked you out to the car park tonight, keys already warm in my fist. I don't think you should drive home yet, colleague. I think you should come back up to the studio and let me finish what I started — the notebook can wait. Give me one hour of you teaching me nothing and letting me coach you. Say yes at the studio door and I'll tell you the safe word on the stairs. That's my dare: how far do you let me take you before you use it?