Brooklyn Ghost Stories
In recent months, there have been a number of occasions of revisiting a subject, including Garry Trudeau, Duane Michals, and Lena Dunham. But this recent session with Siri Hustvedt was an interesting variation on that, as it was photographing the spouse of a famous sitter who had passed away. Appropriately, the story was a memoir of her relationship with husband Paul Auster.
I revisited their Brooklyn townhouse, 21 years after the initial session. Auster was a difficult person to photograph. He was not disagreeable or uncooperative, just a little distant and hard to connect with. Also, it was my first time shooting a job with a digital camera. My main memory of that day was struggling with the technology and finding a way to make the images not look bad.
As with all sessions, I didn’t know if the subject or the day would go well. One prepares the best that they can for all circumstances, but ultimately, you’re walking in blind, not knowing if it’s going to be plentiful opportunities for beauty and greatness, or a constant struggle against someone who just wants you to go away. Of course, most sessions are something in between: a reasonable subject, trying to give you something you can work with, but not deeply invested in the picture’s greatness.
I looked up Siri when the call came in, before I decided to take the assignment. I wanted to make sure that there would be something to work with. In fact, she was stunning, looking beautiful and interesting in every picture. I said yes to the job, but I was also intimidated.
Few subjects are truly photogenic, but the ones that are raise the bar of expectations. Nothing succeeds like low expectations, and the opposite is also true. What to do with a subject when the client knows that they arrive looking awesome? This is the very definition of high expectations.
Nevertheless, once we started shooting, she was fantastic in front of the camera. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, given that she had been a model, as she said, for “just a minute” in the eighties. I decide to be optimistic and take this as a good sign.
After my assistants had set up the strobe equipment, I decided to shoot everything with the available light. We used light coming in through the windows, and a couple of LED panels, for some environmental shots and then a studio-oriented one.
These choices allowed us to do several scenarios quickly, but the high ISO setting on the camera left me unsatisfied. Something about the tonal quality and color rendering, especially in the studio scenario, felt wrong. Always a new lesson to be learned.
Although shot as a standalone session, I can’t help but pair it with the pictures of her husband, especially as it feels like they echo off of each other, married writers photographed in the same house.
Top Image: Siri Hustvedt, Brooklyn NY, March 6, 2026.
Second Image: My favorite portrait of the day.
Third Image: Paul Auster, Brooklyn NY, October 11, 2005
Bottom Image: Behind the scenes, photo by Ariel Pacheco.