Trilogy "The Photographer-Couturier". Part II: Glamour

The studio door opened, and the most beautiful woman in the social columns walked in. Her skin glowed, her proportions were divine, but there was a strange anxiety in her eyes.

"Make me a portrait," she demanded, shedding her furs. "In all pictures, I look... inanimate. Plastic. I want you to reveal my true essence."

The Master gestured for her to sit in the armchair. He put on his smart glasses and activated the biometric analysis mode. Usually, he immediately saw where to adjust the light to hide asymmetry or remove a wrinkle. But now the glasses went crazy. Lines ran before the Master's eyes: "Symmetry — 100%. Golden Ratio — Ideal. Hormonal background — Perfection." She was flawless. Too flawless for a human.

"Very well," said the Master. "We will use the 'light of truth'." He began to set up a harsh, high-contrast lighting scheme. Such light ages and kills ordinary models, but gives drama to the great ones. The Master worked with light like a veil, casting shadows, trying to grope for something human under this ideal mask.

"I want you to see the real me," she whispered.

The Master picked up his film camera. "Film cannot lie, madam. There are no pixels here to redraw. Only chemistry and physics." He aimed the lens, which resembled a clockwork mechanism. The shutter click sounded like a gunshot in the silence.

The woman left, leaving a trail of expensive perfume and generous tips. The Master, feeling a strange chill, went straight to the red room of the darkroom. He lowered the paper into the tray with the reagent and waited.

A minute later, the Master hurled away the tweezers in horror. On the wet snapshot in the armchair sat a hunched old crone with rotting teeth and a sunken nose. The ancient witch had not lied when she asked to show her essence: her magic could deceive the human eye and the digital sensors of smart glasses, but was completely powerless against the simple chemistry of photographic film.