On An American Girl in Italy

Ruth Orkin, An American Girl in Italy.

There’s a man sitting on the bed. Dressed in a t-shirt and grey pants, hands in his lap, his head bowed a little, looking out of the window. The man in the image is black and the man standing next to you is white. Or, rather, pink. He opens his mouth to say something and you instantly wish he wouldn’t. He doesn’t get it, he says. What’s different in this image from all the others? Why do you like this one? Nothing happens. 

But there’s no need for anything to happen – that’s the whole point, you want to tell him. The pause the photograph represents is enough for you. The man in the image clearly has things to think through. It’s not an image where something happens; it’s about what happened before or what might happen after the photograph was taken. It’s about all the things happening to this man that you don’t know about. And that you might never know about. One might learn something new by studying this image, you tell your companion. He just shrugs and moves further into the sky-lit exhibition space, stopping next to a sculpture of blown-up leather pants. Good luck figuring that one out, you say to yourself. 

He just doesn’t get it. Yesterday he said he didn’t understand how it could be difficult for women at this time. You tried to explain. You’d been discussing the photograph by Ruth Orkin, An American Girl in Italy. You explained how it can be, walking down a street for a woman. He argued that the girl in the image had said it was wonderful, that she was carefree, 23 and the world was her oyster. What can you say to someone who doesn’t want to listen? He laughed when you said that maybe the woman just didn’t want to go into it with the journalist she’d allegedly said this to. That perhaps she was tired of discussing street harassment or being the example of it in this picture. You became angry, asking him how he could argue with you as a member of the opposite sex. The evening did not go well. There were no warmth in the goodbye hug and you would have pulled out of this tour today had the tickets not been prepaid. 

You look at the man in the photograph again. You want to let him know that you know. Even if others, your friend in particular, has trouble moving forward. It will be better. You will explain. Over and again. Until he understands.