Art is in the eye of the beholder.
Somewhere amongst the pain morphine cannot quite clog, the words come to my mind. Either some ironic subconscious fancy or a disguised epiphany, or perhaps just a completely random input from some past conversation brought back out of nowhere by trauma - the later seems the less likely, not when it is so befitting to everything that happened and would happen from there on out.
Regardless, those words were some of the first things I recall having crossed my mind when I woke up in the hospital.
.
It took them a while to show me my reflection, which in itself would only increase the dread in a patient, knowing fully well something horrible had happened. I could feel the thick white gauze wrapped around that excrutiatingly throbbing pain half-drowned in morphine.
When the nurse finally gave in and kindly fetched a mirror, I recall the struggle in my mind. A part of me was fully aware I should be envisioning gruesome musings for what my face would now forever look; I should feel stress or fear or at the very least know the possible numbness to all of this would have only been chemical. The struggle was for this part to be noticed, as the other part smothered it with the image etched to my skull. Not of myself, but of another.
"Mr Valentini, I cannot remove the bandages, so it's..." the nurse started, but ended up deciding to be professional and stop delaying my request, oval mirror turrning in front of me.
Of course, what she meant was there was only bandages covering my skin, half my face hidden under a heavy layer. Some time later, when the gauze was changed, the medical staff relunctance remained but they obliged and I could see the face beneath it.
Even now I can say, I did not expect to look like I did. Then again, I suppose no one fully conceptualizes an accurate image of themselves having sustained anything close to this.
Yes, it was gruesome, and I won't deny I was surprised; but again, it was that part of me that was losing the inner battle against the other, that other image creeping at my brain. And looking at my reflection at last, I saw it, past the open wound, burnt skin and tha shrapnel sinked too deep on my obliterated eye.
Rather than myself, I saw the man I was photographing then.
The chaos of thundering rumble around us. Muffled screams merged with cries and orders, a background sound I had become almost as used to as a soundtrack. The ground shaking with each bomb that striked the earth, loose dirt shooting in every direction, hitting my face, my eyes, my camera. The soldiers running, that one man halting for whatever reason... and then the blast.
"The shrapnel is lodged too deeply. A surgery is too risky, considering the possible brain damage and blood loss that could occur. A reconstructive surgery would be mostly inefficient in this situation, given-"
"I'll consider it later." However, I wouldn't. Not only would the surgery accomplish little to nothing under the medical situation previously described to me, I didn't want to remove my camera from my eye.
Surely that was it. Bone, glass, rock, metal projected too fast and too brutally into everything around it; my camera shielded the impact and sunk in through my skull.
It was... beautiful, in a certain way.
No?
"It's natural to experience this," a psychologist would later tell me, a middle aged man appointed to me as part of my recovery process. "What you went through is a very traumatic experience. It's normal to feel this disorientation, the fixation with the image of the man you saw right before the explosion. Your brain has suffered a injury that will require a long recovery. So don't worry about the confusion in your thoughts. Share them, as strange and incoherent as they may seem. I will help you."
What I experienced didn't feel traumatic at all. It was enlightening.
He was not that good of a phychologist now, was he?
.
I read a lot during recovery. Not something that fully pleased the staff yet again, but I can be very persuasive. After all, I had best start to get used to my limited sight, and adjust my left eye to the increased amount of work. Once again, what an ironic choice of words; 'limited' was anything but what I felt. What I feel.
The masters of yore always fascinated me. Painting is the ancestry of photography and it's but natural and respectful to study your predecessors' works, faults and successes. Composition is key to any photo and any painting. There artists portrayed their version of reality with unique excellency, each brush stroke layering ink upon ink to create masterpieces.
Several journalists came to interview me, asking me if the information that my camera's film had indeed been saved from the explosion. Unbelievably so, it had indeed. In my condition, I could not process the film. Needless to say, several of them offered to do it, to use it with my permission as illustration in their articles of the horrors of war. I wasn't too glad that I wouldn't be the first one to see the result of my work, the splendor I had engarved in my brain. I could do little else in this position, so I had to compromise.
It was even better.
I had managed to capture the man's precise instant of death. His body arched, his skull exploding, ribcage shattered and hundreds of specks of bone flying to enlight the layers of red, blood painting the air like masterful brush strokes on a canvas. No one in the world had captured one moment like that; no one.
Composition, light, contrast, color.
The image I had thought about displayed itself in front of me, printed in these cheap paper pages, a shuddering capture. Everything was better than anything I could have imagined.
The feedback was overwhelming. Critics and photographers applauded the haunting photograph, the horrors of war imprinted in a frozen moment, enhanced by the very fact it also almost cost the life of the photographer. Most of them also noted the macabre result, how questionable and debatable was the publishing of such photos, the standards of moral versus information, versus taste.
Letters and more visits came after that; one of the very few people I actually did know was Emily Lewis, my beautiful friend. She always considered me much more her friend that I did the other way, but regardless, I enjoyed her company and she was a welcomed visit.
"Honestly, I don't know what my opinion on this is, Stefano... I read all the reviews, and you work is getting a more than deserved recognition, but... it's so horrible, to see that photograph, to see the price it took..."
"On the contrary, Emily. The price was anything but just, my dear. I wouldn't have it another way if I could change it."
"Stefano!"
"I mean it. In fact, I have been restless to be discharged from this sickbed and buy a new camera."
"You have a long recovery ahead of you. Photographing should be the last thing in your mind right now."
"Has no one told you? I have a literal camera shrapnel sunk in my brain. I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about photography even if I wanted to. My eye is now a lens."
Her laugh resounded warmly through the room.
"You are in a good mood. That's great to see, Stefano. But you will stay away from the battlefield, won't you? No one expects you to return, and not even you are that..."
"Yes. I do think I'll retire for the time being. There are always subjects to photograph away from explosions... this last photo had made me quite inspired."
"God, something like that?"
"Perhaps could you be my model again? I'm certain we will make beautiful art."
.
the end
.
Author's Note: I'm not sure if Stefano would photograph with film back at his war days. Not when it likely happened in late 00's and at the circumstance of war. It makes a lot more sense if he used a digital camera, and then moved on to film when he started getting more artistic and fascinated with the whole process and whatnot. But whatever guys, darkrooms and red light processing rooms in STEM just couldn't get out of my head out of it and so yeah, I wrote that he was photographing with film.
I wrote another Stefano piece called 'Corruption of Innocence' which I invite you to read if you have time.
Edit: Thanks to PineappleApproves for the corrections!
Thanks for reading, feedback is appreciated and please point out mistakes and typos. Disclaimer at the end but obviously don't own The Evil Within or characters