When I saw Lilly’s photography, I wanted her images to be part of the mix, but Lilly said no, photos had to be printed on high-quality paper or else they’d be compromised, and I was running a real shoestring operation, without that kind of grease. I was grateful to her for that. Letting the images go kept the magazine a pure voice for poetry, which is what it was meant to be.

As for the portrait, it was all my idea. Asking wasn’t Lilly’s style. One day when I came to her place, I simply shucked my clothes and told her she could take my picture if she wanted, which I meant as a test and two kinds of invitation. The Lilly who had first moved in downstairs wouldn’t have known what to do with something like that, but the Lilly she had become sure did. In moments she’d set up her camera. As for the second kind of invitation, it didn’t take me long to realize how silly that was. Art as a means toward another end wouldn’t have crossed Lilly’s mind, even if she’d been at all curious about women, which I don’t think she ever was.

23. Woman on park bench, New York, 1954

Deb’s description here is as good as anything I could come up with, since Deb was paying attention and I generally wasn’t. First I was too young; then I was too embarrassed; and then I was too busy being absolutely anywhere else.

DEBORAH BRODSKY: I remember one of a woman sitting. She’s wearing a little hat and a nice dress, and you can tell she lives in a swank apartment somewhere, only at that moment she’s got her shoes off and she’s using one foot to massage the other. Her face broadcasts fatigue but also bewilderment, and you can tell she started out life in a place where there weren’t little hats and nice dresses. When I asked Lilly how she did it, how she found people in these moments, she looked at me like I’d asked her how to tie a shoe. I wait, she said.

So one day, I followed her to Washington Square. Sundays it was all guitars and young men singing folk songs, people collecting for righteous causes, and willowy girls wearing macramé belts and dangly earrings. But on Mondays, when Lilly went, the park belonged to everyone. I made sure to stand at a distance so Lilly wouldn’t know I was there. In a way, it was like being in the darkroom—I was still watching her conjure an image, only this time we were out in the world, and her images were rising to the surface of the moment instead of the paper.