PATRICIA STOKES: Thinking back, I’d have to say that the lavatory was the beginning of the end. By the time we were moving in, Lilly had a small suitcase full of film she’d shot. When I asked her why she didn’t just drop it off at the drugstore, she looked at me like I was telling her to give away her children. Apparently the whole time we’d been apartment shopping, Lilly had been waiting to find a place with a large enough bathtub and reliable hot water—which is how I learned about darkrooms, but if I had known what I was agreeing to, I never would have said yes! In any case, I was too busy deciding what color to paint the living room to notice Lilly’s peculiar nesting instincts. She was installing an enlarger over the toilet, which turned our lavatory into some sort of cross between a science experiment and a torture chamber. If you weren’t careful, you’d knock your head on the thing when you went to stand up. Then there was that red lightbulb, like something out of a Tennessee Williams play, which made it impossible to check your hair in the mirror. Not that going to the john is terribly complicated, but it’s nice to be able to see yourself once in a while.

After Lilly set everything up, she was kind enough to invite me to a demonstration. I could barely fit alongside her and all that equipment, but somehow I managed to cram myself into the corner by the door. Lilly lined the bottom of the bathtub with four metal trays, then attached a hose to the faucet. I vaguely remember her explaining what the different chemicals were, and something else about timing as the image appeared on the paper, but to me the whole thing was magic. Lilly’s pictures were just marvelous. Of course they were beautiful, but more than that, they saw through everything that was phony in the world. As consolation, I tried to tell myself that photography was easier than painting: other than pointing the camera in the right direction, you didn’t have to do anything to make a tree look like a tree. Then I’d stand at my easel, and just the thought of all those perfect photos hanging in the bedroom next to mine made it hard to pick up a paintbrush.

9. Woman in curlers on the Lower East Side, New York, 1953