Opinion

Anita Robinson: Don't believe anyone who says the camera never lies

Every picture tells a story - Anita Robinson with her husband and daughter
Every picture tells a story - Anita Robinson with her husband and daughter Every picture tells a story - Anita Robinson with her husband and daughter

WHY is it everyone else’s photographs look exactly like them but your own never do you justice?

There are celebrities whom the paparazzi waylay when drunk and dishevelled who still contrive to look effortlessly fabulous lying insensible in a gutter.

My scraped acquaintance with local fame results in the occasional frightful mugshot in the regional press whose reproductive processes make me look as if suffering from a bad attack of scurvy and whose photographer has an unerring eye for a double chin.

There are people whom the camera loves. I am not one of them.

I had an interesting conversation with a lighting cameraman once who explained at length how different angles of light change the planes of the face.

“For example,” he said looking at me consideringly, “after a certain age women’s faces start to droop and lighting from below pushes everything backup. That’s why people like Joan Collins and Jane Fonda always go for the set up shot.”

So utterly intrigued was I by this intelligence that I got a torch and tested the theory, holding it like a buttercup under my chin – and it worked.

I ran round the house placing every available lamp at floor level. I floated in flattering gloom from the waist up but had to get down on my hands and knees to read the paper.

Who, I wonder, brought in the notion of smiling at the camera? Early photographs show po-faced subjects with all the stolidity of plum puddings, but I wonder if it wasn’t preferable to the demented rictus demanded by the press snapper who spends 10 minutes dragooning you into battle formation, apologises twice for his non-functioning flash gun and then prints your name wrong in the paper.

(My personal best was a moon-faced shot of me with the attribution, ‘Annetta Robertson, winner of the yearling heifer class’ at an agricultural show.)

And whence came this idiotic craze for making people jump into the air to express delight?

For Daughter Dear’s fifteenth birthday we thought we’d mark the occasion with a family portrait.

We set a date with a high-class photographer and agreed on black as a unifying colour theme.

On the day in question the Loving Spouse awoke croaking and bloodshot, temperature raging and hair plastered to his perspiring brow, his nose a Belisha beacon.

“I’m dying,” he said. “Get up,” I said, “you’re having your photograph taken. If all else fails, it’ll do for your memoriam card.”

At the studio I lined us up for inspection while the photographer did mysterious things with white umbrellas.

Daughter Dear, hair shining, complexion peach-like, nearly passed muster, until I noticed her small boiled eyes.

She’d got her self up in apricot-coloured eyeshadow and looked like an albino rabbit who’d been up all night. I was beside myself.

Spitting on a hanky I scrubbed her clean. “If you ever do a thing like this again I’ll put you in a home!” I hissed. Her already piggy eyes filled with tears.

“Leave the child alone,” croaked the Loving Spouse, blowing blearily into a mansize tissue. I regarded him narrowly.

“That sweater looks awfully high in front,” I said. “My God, the shoulder seams are halfway down your chest. You have it on back-to-front.”

“And I’m not changing it,” he spat. The battle continued in furious whispers. By this time I was in a state – flushed, hectic, my neck out in red blotches and my three strands of pearls in a hopeless tangle.

I’m going to have a coronary, I thought. The Loving Spouse comforted whimpering Daughter Dear. “Your mother’s having one of her turns,” he explained.

“Ready?” called the photographer. Rigid with rage, we three arranged ourselves in a touching tableau vivant, the Loving Spouse’s hand protectively on my shoulder, my arm encircling Daughter Dear. “Lean towards each other,” encouraged the photographer.

Obediently, our three heads inclined devotedly like daffodils in a breeze – the picture of familial harmony. “Smile…” said the photographer.

Who says the camera never lies?