Wild Tales Read Online Free Page A

fascination for a kid my age watching, bug-eyed, as a blank sheet of paper was run through those baths and an image slowly materialized on the page. Fabulous! My dad turned me on to the whole process. And it wasn’t long before he put a camera in my hands, where it remains to this day. I was shocked that he could afford it. It seemed an impossibility. But the thrill of owning and using it pushed any questions right out of my head.
    From the time I was ten, I’ve been obsessed with taking pictures, and not just any old snapshots but pictures that captured something significant, something insightful about the subject. Much of it stemmed from my curiosity about people. And a lot of it had to do with not wanting to stick out, trying to remain invisible, like when I was up in that tree, so that the subject would appear natural, not aware that I was there. In the majority of cases, you come up empty-handed, but every once in a while you land a gem. My favorite image from those days is a picture I took of my mother. I remember realizing,
Wow!
That’s not your normal snapshot.
We had gone on family holiday to the Middleton Towers Holiday Camp, a getaway for working-class people about thirty miles north of Manchester. A young woman who had jumped into the swimming pool must have hit her head because she was floating kind of funny, obviously in distress. Instinctively, my dad dove in and rescued her, and in the process her top came off. Man, it was the first pair of tits I ever saw! I was eleven years old. Are you kidding! This was fantastic! But my mother was sitting in a deck chair at the other end of the pool. It was a broken cloudy day, and she had a plaid coat draped around her shoulders, sunglasses on, a cigarette in her hand. For some reason, I turned away from the woman to watch my mother. She didn’t know that I was looking at her, seeing her not only as a mother but wondering, Who really is this person? I caught her in a very quiet, almost distracted moment. And that’s when I realized I saw things differently.
    Photography really captivated me full-time. I saved every penny I could to buy film for my camera. Luckily, I had a job that brought me a couple shillings. My Uncle Ben was a union rep, and every Saturday morning he sent me out on rounds to collect union subscriptions. I’d go knock on doors
—bam! bam! bam!—
“Union subs!” Sometimes people would peek through a curtain and not answer the door, but mostly they’d pay up. I had a book with names and the amount they owed and a column where I would tick off their name if they made a payment. In any case, I contributed most of what I earned to the family coffers; whatever was left over would go for film. My friend Fred Moore and I set up a makeshift darkroom in his backyard where we developed roll after roll of the images we’d taken.
    The camera gave me a new perspective on my young life. But all of that changed by the end of 1953. One evening, after kicking a ball around outside with some friends, I came home to find my mother in an unusual state. “Your dad’s in trouble,” she said, unable to conceal her anguish.
    While I’d been out, the police had come to the door. “Is William Nash in?” they’d demanded.
    My mother told them he was having his tea, but they wouldn’t be put off. They wanted to know about a certain camera in his possession. Mine, the one he had given me.
    “I didn’t steal it,” he insisted. “I bought it from a friend at work.” It was a cheap camera, he said, which cost him about ten pounds.
    They wanted a name, which my father refused to provide, because as everyone knows, you don’t grass on friends. Unfortunately, the cops weren’t buying his story, and they arrested him for possession of stolen goods.
    This was really earth-shattering to me. My dad was a good man, an honest man, law-abiding, and proud. He’d never been in trouble. The police never had reason to darken our door before—it was unheard of. Now