PATRICIA STOKES: For a while I didn’t mind it, since Lilly’s camera was what drew me to her to begin with. Try to remember, at that point pictures were just things you took for the family album, or for newspapers or magazines. But when I saw what Lilly was doing, I knew I had to start thinking about photography in a new way.

At first it felt kind of glamorous, being followed around like that, but the feeling didn’t last long. I could never tell whether Lilly was planning to take my picture until I heard the click. The whole conversation, she’d be looking straight at me. Then her hand would start doing its own thing, like it was possessed. It was creepy, if you really want to know. The worst was when she’d disappear for a while, sneak back into whatever room I happened to be in, and then—click. So in a way, the girls at Katharine House were right: she was a spy. I finally made a rule. Lilly could be in the room with me or she could be in the room with her camera, but she couldn’t be in the room with us both.

8. Woman at the window, New York, 1953

It may look like a double exposure or a combination print, but it isn’t. Doubters can check the contact sheet, which shows that Lillian got the woman’s expression and the outside reflection all at once. I suppose there’s no way of knowing what the seamstress at the sewing machine is actually pining for, but the way Lillian caught the reflected cars and people and sidewalks makes it easy to think she wants everything on the other side of that pane of glass.