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in the warehouse, which I’d done before, but he had something else in mind. He pushed a large book across the desk.
    â€˜Have you heard of Saul Auerbach?’
    The photograph on the cover looked familiar.
    â€˜He’s a photographer, a very good one. Also happens to be a friend of your Uncle Douglas.’
    Now I placed the photo. There was a copy of it in my uncle’s lounge. It had caught my eye mainly because I was not used to seeing a photograph framed and hung on the wall like a painting.
    â€˜Doug’s arranged for you to spend Thursday with Saul. He’s doing some work around the city and he’s kindly agreed to let you ride along.’
    â€˜What for?’
    â€˜I think it will be good for you. You might even learn something.’
    â€˜I don’t want to be a photographer.’
    â€˜That doesn’t matter. It’s not about finding a profession, you’ll make your own way in the end, I’m sure. It’s about this anger you’re walking around with, this bottled-up rage against the world. It worries me: it’s going to land you in trouble. And that’s why you might learn something from Saul. He’s a man with strong convictions, but he’s learned to direct them.’
    â€˜I don’t even know the guy.’
    My father tapped on the book. ‘Just look at the pictures.’
    If you want to find out about Saul Auerbach, go ahead and google him. He has three pages on Wikipedia and gets a mention on dozens of photography sites. Saulauerbach.com, which is maintained by his agent, has the basic facts of his career. If you’re after the details, there are blogs devoted to particular periods of his work and squabbles about its merits. Specialized search engines will guide you to his photographs in museums and you can find others scattered in online journals and galleries. Writing a paper? There are articles, freely accessible or available for purchase, on his style, his influences, his politics, on his use of black and white, on the question of whether he is a photographer or an artist or both. Planning to buy? Getart.com offers investment advice. If, after all this, you still need a book on the subject, the online retailers will show you what’s in print and bookHound will direct you to the bargains. You could become an expert on Auerbach without getting up from your desk.
    In those days, before everyone’s life was an open secret, research involved a trip to a library or a newspaper archive, and the pickings were often slim. While I was curious about Auerbach, I did not have time to find out who he was. They might have had something about him in the Wartenweiler on campus, but I did not want to go there. I had declared the university out of bounds.
    All I had was the pictures. I sat on my bed, with the book propped against my knees, and flipped through it. It was a great book, according to my father (quoting my uncle, the artistic side of the family). I had no way of telling, although I was ready to disagree. Between the covers were two hundred of Auerbach’s photographs: he had made the selection himself. The images were dense and sunken, they seemed to have settled beneath the glossy surfaces like gravestones. These black and white boxes weighed on me. Worlds had been compacted into them and sealed in oil. If I tilted the book the wrong way and exposed some pinhole to the air, they might burst into their proper dimensions. I imagined one of these rooms inhaling, filling itself with life, breaking back into scale with a crack of stage lightning. The images were familiar and strange. I kept looking at a hand or a foot, a shoe, the edge of a sheet turned back, the street name painted on a kerb. Have I been here? Is this someone I’m going to meet? I turned the pages with the unsettling feeling that I had looked through the book before and forgotten.
    The title page was inscribed: ‘To Doug and Ellen, with my very best wishes and