Introduction

Stephen Leacock's short story "With the Photographer" expands a simple moment—having one's photo taken—into a humorous and exaggerated reflection on self-worth and identity. Set around 1912 in Canada, the story captures the experience of sitting for a portrait at a time when photography was a formal and painstaking process. Leacock published the story in his 1913 collection Behind the Beyond and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge. Like many pieces in the collection, "With the Photographer" uses satire to highlight the absurdity of everyday situations. The story humorously critiques society's obsession with appearance and invites readers to embrace their imperfections, even as others attempt to alter them.

Plot Summary

As the story opens, the narrator enters a photography shop and tells the photographer he wants his picture taken. The photographer, a "drooping man in a gray suit, with the dim eye of a natural scientist," is decidedly unenthusiastic and tells the narrator to wait. The narrator waits for a full hour, reading old magazines and thinking he has "done an unwarrantable thing" by presenting a face like his to a professional photographer.

Finally called into the studio, the photographer sets up his camera but, after a glance at the narrator, scrambles to adjust the lighting. As he continues, he bluntly states that "the face is quite wrong" and suggests it would look better "three-quarters full." The narrator wryly agrees, remarking that this could apply to many people, including the photographer himself.

The photographer tries to adjust the narrator's face and then complains about the head, the ears, the eyes, and the neck. He has the narrator make all kinds of adjustments but is still not satisfied. Finally, the narrator has had enough and says, "This face is my face. It is not yours, it is mine." He says he knows all about its faults, but it is the only face he will ever have, and "I've learned to love it." The photographer quickly takes the picture and tells the narrator to come back on Saturday to see the proof.

When the narrator returns on Saturday, the first thing he asks upon seeing the picture is, "Is it me?" The photographer tells him it is, but he admits that he has made some adjustments to the eyes, eyebrows, hairline, and mouth. He has touched up the elements he does not like and thinks they came out splendidly. He has forgotten the ears, though, but he will fix these, too, through a new process.

Suddenly, the narrator loses his temper. "Listen!" he says, with "a withering scorn." He tells the photographer that he came for a picture his friends could use to remember him after his death. But this has certainly not happened. "What I wanted is no longer done." Rather, the photographer is engaged in the "brutal work" of trying to make everything perfect, and the image is no longer like the narrator. Disgusted, he leaves the photographer with the "worthless bauble" of a picture that no longer resembles him.