They all fall into three broad categories
They all fall into three broad categories.Category One writers look hesitant, frightened, or disturbed: apprehension lurks in their gaze. This is a look you will have seen before, in the eyes of a pet hamster or some other small animal which lived in dread, dependent on your indulgence for its survival.Category Two writers appear to have had all trace of personality airbrushed out, and their weak smiles seem computer-generated. No matter how forceful their rhetoric, the work is deflated by the rigidity and blandness of image. The worst resemble cryogenics experiments gone wrong.Category Three writers are easiest to spot: cocky, smirking know-it-alls, people who believe their own press. Unfortunately, if you don't take the photo session seriously, you can fall into this group by default, in the same way that a smug bastard columnist, experiencing a rare moment of conscious insecurity before the camera, may end up in Category One.These are the options. Which is why, photographically speaking, I'd rather be dead.One might argue that wanting to remain invisible is just as vain as wanting to be seen My reluctance stems from cowardice and expedience Invisibility makes it so much easier to be heroic.
Unseen, I could take diabolical liberties and give till it hurts, then give and take some more Unknown, I moved among people unnoticed. But even in the tiniest doses, celebrity erodes this privilege. So the idea of my picture on this column makes me feel exposed and compromised. Not to mention sick.It also makes me a target - for disgruntled readers, those I write about, and worst of all, my colleagues in the press.
Stick your head above the trenches and sooner or later someone will take a shot. Look at the personal flak Suzanne Moore got from Germaine Greer last month. The luxury of visual anonymity is not one to give up lightly.Some people thrive on this kind of thing, but I'm a scaredy-cat. I don't want to get into a mudslinging match with another columnist, but I reckon it's only a matter of time. Just the other day I was accosted at a party by an ex-junkie hack. "You're so full of shit," she informed me, apropos of nothing. "You really believe that crap you write about yourself." Alright, so I did screw her once and never call her again, but that was in 1982.