Seven-year-old writer

On the cheese counter line at Fairway in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a father and his seven year-old daughter waited their turn. Caroline, who was behind them, was taken by their warm relationship and the little girl's liveliness and good looks. They began to talk to each other. He was English, and by chance, lived as a child in the street adjoining mine in London. Caroline told him that she thought I would like to photograph his daughter.

And so it was that last Saturday we met for a sandwich at The Hope and Anchor and to take a photograph. The place was packed, but a slim, quiet and polite young man immediately took care of us and showed us into the back room. As soon as we were settled the girl took a notebook from her satchel and started work with a pencil. "I'm writing a book," she said. "Actually, at the moment, I am working on The Table of Contents." Then she read us the first paragraph of the book: "The dark crept into a light corner where Judy was sleeping. No-one could hear the loud moans of the dog. When a piece of the sun popped out of the air it bounced off clouds in a fast speed. It landed with a thump. It was a glowing ball as bright as a star but more. It started to grow into a flower. Everything was dark. The flower was sucked into the ground. Judy and her 2 brothers started to wake up."

She ordered pancakes and bacon and as she ate, she chatted and wrote. I looked around and saw behind me an empty table in good light which the management warmly welcomed me to have my subject sit at, whenever I was ready to take the picture. The light came from a glass door into the street and a mixture of coloured and regular tungsten lights from the room.

The girl suddenly said, "I thought we were here to have my photograph taken and all we have done is talk, talk." She had talked as much as any of us and had also been busy devouring the extra bacon that she ordered with her pancakes.

I was ready, and without any fuss she sat where I asked her to and she sat how I asked her to. The other customers looked and smiled as I am sure everybody does when they see this radiant, high-spirited girl.

Woman at a party

I cannot remember the occasion that I took this picture. It was almost certainly a wedding or a dance somewhere in England in the 1970s where glasses were constantly refilled, and that this woman had an unusually un-English face. I also wonder if curly hair was the fashion then or her own statement.

I remember that it was taken on Ilford 800 ISO HPS film with a Leica. 800 ISO was comparatively high speed for those days and HPS had excellent grain structure and shadow detail.

Kiki Smith

The interesting bits of New York then - Lower East Side, Soho, Tribeca - had no door bells. Neither were there cell phones, so you either shouted or rang from a pay phone. I can't remember which I did but I remember that that was the easiest part of taking the picture.

I remember being silently furious because I saw at once the picture I wanted to take. In a flash it was destroyed by Ms. Smith tidying up her unmade bed that she had plonked herself down on after greeting me. I said, "Don't do a thing." But she did. She straightened everything out.

After that, I sulked about wondering what to do, and landed up with this.

One of my regular commentators on this blog is a great fan of Ms. Smith's (especially now, for reasons she might disclose, that my friend is considering branching out into the performance art world). I think I would like this post to be a joint effort. "Please Heather, tell us what you have to say."

Barbara Kruger

Ms. Kruger showed us into her studio, and asked us to sit down. She sat in a place round the table which was in shadow. I could see a spot a few feet from where we sat where the light was good. I asked her if we could do the picture there but she wouldn't budge. I explained that her face was in shadow. "That's alright," she said. I tried to explain that really it wasn't alright, and that the light was very good in the spot that I had pointed out. I would then take three frames and be gone. No, she would not stand there. I then asked Cathy, my daughter, to stand there and said, "Please look, doesn't she look good?" "Yes, she does." I took my three frames and we departed.