Judith Krantz Read Online Free Page A

thin sweater, her hipbones poked sharp angles in her short knitted skirt, and no matter what she ate she never gained an ounce. At thirty-eight she knew that she could be mistaken, at first glance, for a cheerleader at UCLA.
    Phoebe chose a fresh water bagel from the pile on the platter on her desk and larded it thickly with chive cream cheese. She was not, thank heaven, what she ate, she reflected. No, every photographer’s rep was who she represented. Like a horse trainer, her own status was established by her stable.
    Phoebe, for all her sense of superiority, was free of unwarranted conceit. She had an acutely accuratenotion of her worth, and of that of others. Her own charges were the hottest trio in town, each at the red-hot peak of the profession. Without her they wouldn’t have reached this point. Of course she wouldn’t be where she was without them. But that essentially was beside the point. If not Jazz, Mel and Pete, three others would be in her stable.
    Phoebe glanced at her watch. The meeting would start in five minutes. Still time to take stock, as she liked to do each month, to make sure that nothing was gaining on her in a fast-growing business that changed month by month.
    Each one of her partners was a maverick, each a demon when it came to getting the shot; and each—and this was the most important thing about them—each one of them was far, far on the other side of
safe
.
    Safe
, in photography today, was the only four-letter word left, as far as Phoebe was concerned. Every photographer with a decent portfolio could do safe, but only a few photographers in the game would consistently push beyond safe, into unexplored territory, and pull it off, without getting artsy-craftsy or blurring the client’s intention. And when they
did
go beyond safe, didn’t they always turn to her, their rep, to bring them back home a little, to keep them from being scared to death? Would they dare to be as controversial as they could be without knowing that she approved?
    It wasn’t a question of technique, God knew. Two hundred photographers had technique, and another two hundred had taste; many millions—even civilians—could take pretty pictures. But her guys? Each one produced work that could be identified instantly by all the best photo buyers and art directors in the business. They were to the camera what any truly original painter was to canvas.
    It had to do with two things, Phoebe mused, with two things she could identify: uniqueness of point of view and knowledge of lighting. No good knowing how to light anything from a spark plug to Michelle Pfeiffer without having a point of view. No good havinga point of view without a total command of the almost infinite possibilities of lighting.
    And then there was that third thing she couldn’t exactly put a name to and neither could they. It was that third thing—some people called it, tamely, originality—but she thought of it as
outrageousness
—that made Jazz, Mel and Pete the best. There were too many merely good, capable, proficient photographers around today. Unless a photographer was willing, no, not just willing, but absolutely desperate to
exceed
the known limits of film, each and every time, he or she could never command the highest fees. Mel, Pete and Jazz had equals but no superiors, she thought, intent on fairness. A handful of equals each, it went without saying, belonging to a rep as good as she, of whom there were but three in California.
    Any would-be rep would have found it impossible to find such photographers in Los Angeles fifteen years ago, Phoebe thought soberly, glad but not surprised that she had been born in the ideal time and place.
    Almost all the top photographers used to live and work in New York. But that had changed swiftly, particularly in the fields of food, cars and celebrity portraits, and now much of the major talent was concentrated in Los Angeles. She had been in on it from the beginning.
    Twelve years earlier, when she had