Lella, Brittany, 1947 (detail) — Édouard Boubat

Muse — by Billy Howard

Lella, Brittany, 1947 Édouard Boubat

The muse is a powerful force that both inspires and ignites artists, who stalk their prey with pen, paint, clay, bronze, and film trying to capture the ephemeral for eternity. The first photograph that I remember stealing my breath away was Édouard Boubat’s portrait of his lover, muse, and then wife, Lella. The translucent blouse, the mysterious woman behind her, a horizon suggesting movement, and her gaze — eyes looking forever forward to the same point, unseen by us but her expression leaving clues. Neither joy nor fear are betrayed, but something of longing for whatever was behind her and strong resolve for what lays ahead.

Finding this image as a teenager in a photo magazine left an indelible mark on my psyche. Tourists visiting Florence for the first time might experience dizziness, their hearts would begin beating faster, and they might faint or hallucinate. Their condition became known as Stendhal Syndrome, named for a 19th century French author who experienced these symptoms upon his 1817 visit to the city. He wrote: “I was in a sort of ecstasy…absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty…I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations…everything spoke so vividly to my soul…I had palpitations of the heart…life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.”

Or less poetically, as befit my teenage self, I was bowled over.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I would search for that look the rest of my life, finding it in subjects all over the world, in shops and delis, on street corners and bars, in lovers, friends, and strangers, and eventually, in a wife who tolerates the compulsive need of her husband to aim a lens in her direction. Like Boubat, I married my muse. I experience, as perhaps he did, that quickening heartbeat, a slight dizziness, and a sort of ecstasy, and lift my camera in an attempt to capture it.

As a young photographer working for Georgia Tech I was walking across campus and saw Haydee, an exchange student from Venezuela. I photographed her, and then photographed her again and again.

Hiking into a remote farming village in Bangladesh it began to rain as I came around a curve in the trail and saw a girl bathing in the village pond. Her quiet gaze was a moment of grace in a difficult journey.

I was in Accra, Ghana on a day resting from documenting the Carter Center’s efforts to eradicate guinea worm disease when I passed by a tailor’s shop and saw this face in the window. The simple power of her expression stopped me, and I entered the shop with no business other than to capture that look.

There are moments in almost every day when I look at this face and experience that quickening heartbeat and overwhelming sensation that Stendhal described. When I am lucky, she lets me take a photograph.

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