The Covers

I think the best way to learn a language quickly might just be acute paranoia.

When I first met my French husband and his large extended family I was convinced that they were, one and all, talking trash about me - albeit in that gorgeous Gallic way of theirs. "Blah blah blah blah blah Olivia. Blah blah Olivia blah blah,” I would overhear the aunts and uncles and cousins say while surreptitiously glancing my way…and I would work myself into a self-conscious and irritated tizzy. So I learned French at warp speed. I took classes. I hired a one-on-one tutor. I read newspapers and magazines and even children’s books. I watched movies in French and listened to French music. Now I’m quite comfortable with the language and when we are in France or seeing members of my husband’s family I don’t feel any of my old anxiety. I’ve also come to realize that my husband’s family wasn't talking trash about me. They were discussing what the French are always discussing: food and politics. And if I do happen to overhear my name spoken in a French sentence it will always be something like “would Olivia prefer meat or fish?”

It was while forcing myself to learn French that I heard a song that I will never forget. At the time my French was sketchy (at best) but there was a line in one song that I played over and over, thinking I must have heard it wrong, or that my translation was off. The line was “tout ne sera jamais assez,” or in English “everything will never be enough.”

I went to my husband and asked him if that was the correct meaning. He laughed. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said and then added “ah, the French,” (even though he’s French) and left it at that.

Last week I was cleaning out my office and throwing away lots of junk. I need a clean and uncluttered space to work in and my office, until last week, was anything but. In my whirling dervish frenzy I came across a box, dented and dusty with neglect. On the top, written in a bold sharpie scrawl, was the word “COVERS.”

I gasped when I saw it. I knew what it was: all the magazine covers I have shot over the years as a fashion photographer. There are well over fifty. I sat down, took a deep breath and dove in. There they all were, each protected in its own plastic sheath. The proof that I had “made it.”

But made what? I remember when I first started out as a photographer, running around Manhattan and fighting for assignments. Battling with and against the gang of other aspiring photographers in Gotham. We would get rejected and rejected and rejected again. And then we would get rejected some more. “You’re never going to make it,” I remember an agent at some hot-shot agency telling me with a bored yawn. “Find another career while you’re still young.” So my reject friends and I would slink off and drink and smoke and moan together about how mean and unfair it all was.

But we kept on going.

Then some of us started getting small jobs. Little here-and-there work for the magazines. Nothing big, just the crap that the “real” photographers would never stoop to shoot. A girl applying mascara for a beauty section. A model lying in bed while wearing an eye mask for an editorial on sleeping habits. But then we slowly started to get bigger jobs. Jobs where our names would be printed…yes, in the gutter of the magazine, but still…our names were there. In an honest-to-God fashion magazine.

Now we wanted more. And we hustled and shimmied and jived until we got bigger jobs. I worked 14-hour days as a photographer’s assistant (more like an indentured servant) for years. With the money I made I flew myself to Europe (where I heard it might be easier to get bookings) again and again and again - until someone took a chance on me. And then there it was. My name in a magazine, and not in the gutter. On a page. A big fancy glossy page in bold type. “Photographs by Olivia Graham.” But I still wasn’t satisfied. Now I wanted a cover. “If I can just get one cover,” I assured myself, “then I can be happy. Then I can finally relax. Then I can die in peace.”

And then, several years later, I got my first cover and was finally happy. Thrilled actually. I would walk by every newsstand I could and see my cover and feel full of satisfaction. For a month, anyway, while it was on the newsstands. But then, after a few short weeks, it was replaced…by another cover. A cover that I had not shot. A cover shot by someone else. I was depressed and dispirited. And I knew the only thing that would make me feel better was to get another cover. And then another. And then another.

And that was the box that I was going through. All those covers. All those memories. I laughed at myself and, in fact, I cried a little. Because it had been so important to me at one time. My self esteem, all my feelings about myself, were utterly dependent for decades on those covers. If I had one. If I did not. How long it had been between them. If I had a dry spell I felt like a failure, not just as a photographer but as a human being. If I had several covers at once I felt like the master of the universe. A master of the universe for a fleeting four weeks, until the unsold magazines got shredded. Then I would go back to panicking about when I would get another cover. When would I ever be happy again?

Now I have this box, full to bursting with all those covers I shot over all those decades. And I am proud of them. But at the same time I’m looking for someone with a parrot, because I know these covers of mine would make an excellent lining for the floor of a bird cage.

Is it the nature of an artist to never be satisfied? To never be fulfilled? To always be looking for something on the outside to make us feel good on the inside? Or is that simply human nature? I remember a client once flying me and a crew down to the Bahamas in his private plane. When I complimented him on the aircraft and its luxuriousness he shrugged and said “yeah but so and so (his direct competitor) has a G700,” which I could tell from his defeated expression and slumped shoulders is a nicer private plane than his.

Today, magazines are dead. Or if not dead they’re dying…slowly and painfully. I don’t even try to get cover assignments today, because, like most of the world it seems, I don’t care that much about magazines anymore.

I am very grateful for my career. All the amazing places I've seen, the wonderfully creative people I've met, and the memories I’ve made. But I had to smile at the folly of it all as I went through the covers in that dusty cardboard box.

I finally understand that as an artist, as an addict, but also as a human on planet Earth, that maybe I’m just greedy. Maybe I will always want more and more and more. And then a little bit more. And maybe, if I’m not careful and don’t remember to be grateful on a daily basis for all that I do have, I will become that French song. And then, sadly for me, even everything...will never be enough.