The Photographer's Assistant

San Felipe, Bogota. 4:15 p.m. Three hundred thousand pesos. Fifty-five minutes on camera.

All characters are 18 or older. Fiction.

The studio was on the second floor of a building that used to be a textile workshop, and the shoot was a series the photographer called Hands, which meant four hours of the man in the good jacket holding things while I moved a softbox around him and tried not to be in the frame. He held a glass. He held a coil of wire. He held a hammer, and then he held nothing at all, and the photographer said, "That one. Hold that one," and the shutter went for a long time.

Watch the uncut tape of this scene → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

I was nineteen and I had been the lighting assistant for eight months and I had never once been in front of the lens. I knew the lights better than the photographer did. I knew what the paper did when you moved the key two inches. What I did not know was what it felt like.

She had warned me about him on the first day. He does not sign a release for his face, she said. He is called the Angel of Bogota by the people who book him, and if you ask him why he will not tell you.

At six the photographer packed up and left with the cards in her bag and told me to strike the set and lock up. She was gone before the door swung shut. I was up on the ladder folding the last of the seamless paper when he came back in from the stairwell with his jacket over his arm.

See what the camera actually caught → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

"You are still here," he said.

"Striking the set."

"Leave it." He put his jacket on the stool and looked at the paper, the lights, the camera still on the tripod where she had left it. "You want to be behind that."

Open the full Angel of Bogota episode → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

"Si, senor."

"You will be. You are good with the lights. She will not say it, but she knows." He walked the length of the paper and turned and walked back. "But you have never been in front of it. That is the thing that will make you good and you have not done it, so you are guessing."

I came down off the ladder. "It is not the same. I am not the subject. I am the one who makes the subject possible."

Stream the uncut version (18+) → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

He looked at me for a while. Then he opened the briefcase and took out the phone on the gimbal, and set it on the light stand, and pointed it at the middle of the paper.

"Three hundred thousand pesos," he said. "Cash. You stand where I was standing, and I light you, and I film it, and my face is not in the frame. One hour. The door is locked and you keep the key in your pocket."

I said, "You would let me see the frame first."

The video behind this story → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

"Of course." He turned the phone around. "Check it."

I checked it. It was a good frame. It was a better frame than the photographer had been using all afternoon, and I told him so, and he said, "I know," and I laughed, and the decision was made somewhere in the laughing.

The Paper

He put the money on the stool and I took off my shirt and shoes and stood on the seamless paper in my jeans, and the paper was cold and made a sound when I shifted my weight. He moved the key light. He moved it again. He came over and turned my chin with two fingers and stepped back and looked at me and said, "There. Now you know what she sees."

See the hour the camera kept → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

I had thought it would be strange to be looked at. It was not strange. It was like being handed something heavy and being trusted to hold it.

"Take the rest off," he said.

I did, and the paper took the light on my skin and the room got very quiet. He circled me with his arms folded and gave directions in the same flat voice he used for everything. Chin down. Shoulders back. Hands at your sides, no, not like a soldier, like a man. Turn. Stop. Hold that. He was not touching me at all and I was hard enough that it was frankly a problem for the composition, and he looked at it, and then at me.

Watch the uncut tape of this scene → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

"Do you want me to do something about that?"

"Si, senor."

"Say it."

See what the camera actually caught → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

"I want you to do something about it."

He took his time setting the phone to record. The red light came on. Then he came and stood close and put one hand flat on my chest and pushed until my back was against the roll of paper, and kissed me with his thumb on my jaw, and the paper roll shifted and we both nearly went over, and he caught it with his shoulder and said something in Spanish I did not know was in him.

The Floor

He put me down on the paper on my hands and knees. The lights were still where I had put them, which meant the key was behind me and low, and I could see our shadows thrown up on the wall, enormous, moving. He used his fingers first and I heard myself say things in a voice that did not sound like mine.

Open the full Angel of Bogota episode → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

"You are going to be good at this," he said. "You have been watching for eight months."

"Watching is not..."

"No. It is not." He pushed in and my arms went out from under me and my cheek came down on the paper. "But it is a start."

Stream the uncut version (18+) → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

He fucked me on the floor of the studio with the softbox humming and the shutter of nobody's camera going, and the paper tore under my hand at some point and I said sorry, sorry, and he said, "It is paper. It costs nothing. Be quiet," and then he pulled me up by the chest and made me watch the wall where the shadows were.

He finished across my back and I came on the paper, and then we sat on the floor with our backs against the roll and he gave me water from a bottle in his briefcase.

"You will be behind the camera," he said. "That is not a kindness. It is a fact about your eye." He screwed the cap back on. "But now you know what it costs the one in front. You will not waste them."

The video behind this story → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

At the door he stopped and looked back at the set, the torn paper, the lights still burning.

"Strike it," he said. "Then go home and sleep. The Angel of Bogota is not a man you should stay up thinking about."

I struck the set. I swept the paper into the bin and coiled the cables and turned off the lights, and in the dark I stood for a minute in the place where he had stood and looked at the place where I had been, and then I locked the door.

See the hour the camera kept → uncut bogota angel files, 18+

File closed. Subject paid in full. Camera card retained.