Portrait of a Photograph

Ashley Mills reflects on what stories lay inside the Cellar wall pictures.

It smells like a basement descent, musty and damp. Through the door I can see lights inside, dull, but warm. When the door swings open under the touch of my fingertips, the dank smell disappears and my senses perk up to the aroma of baking pizza, subs, and all manner of delicious things. The lights are brighter behind the door but still turned low enough to allow my tired eyes a slow adjustment, and once they do, my sight is filled at every turn. Rows of bottles line up in front of me behind the bar. I step down, pushed forward by the flow of people behind me, and move right into the small space between the bar and the door jamb.

I turn and Europe is in front of me, filling the wall. Seeing the photographs as windows, I could be anywhere. They have that effect, opening the enclosed space; transporting us away from our small town, to a place that is everywhere and nowhere, outside of time and space. It frees us to envision ourselves wherever we want to be—on the canal in Venice, jumping puddles in Hyde Park, exploring ruins in Italy.

I gaze at a photograph of an old theater, filled to the rafters. People lean, or perhaps are pushed over the railing of the balcony. Is a riot in the making, or an attempt to greet their friends below? It seems out of place amongst the landmarks that surround it. It is active, while they are passive. It is not a place to identify with. It is a story that is not finished, like the photograph across the room of an aristocratic boy and his protector, a man dressed as a sailor. The caption tells us the protector left his job and security to join the Bolshevik revolution, but what happened to that boy?

The bar stool scrapes across the floor loudly as I pull it out to sit. Embarrassed, I look around to see if anyone noticed, but in the crowd, I am just one of many. Young men in baseball hats and shirts with fraternity letters are pressed against the bar waiting for a drink. Next to them, a woman in a pashmina sitting alone, looking around. In a corner booth, a young married couple is deep in conversation. At the end of the bar, a man in jeans and work boots nurses a beer with a cigarette in his hand. My pint arrives quickly and as the glass empties, my mind fills with thoughts of those around me, living and frozen on film. Most are oblivious to the walls that surround them; a few stare openly at the photographs, discussing where those stories began and ended.

The story of the Cellar is a long one. Many photographs were found to be beyond repair when the downstairs was remodeled a few years ago. They were replaced with the ones we now see. Wrapped up in the stories of our own lives, most of us never noticed. I push my emptied glass to the far edge of the bar and glance around me. The smoke is thick and I don’t see any familiar faces. I slide the stool back, without the loud squeal this time, and begin to push my way to the door through the gathering crush of bodies.

To my right I notice two photographs wrapping around the corner of the wall. They seem to be two halves of the same image. There is text overlaying the scene of a river fortress, along the bottom of the photograph. It reads, “Ehpenbreitstein, Fortress on the Rhine, Coblenz, Germ. 1949”. From the depths of my mind, I conjure up the dates, and do the math. It was taken just after the end of the war.

I climb the stairs feeling as though I am walking forward out of history. I am leaving behind captured moments of other people’s lives, narratives of war and life; stories we wade through, and take lessons from. I am stepping back into my own story.