"Madeleine got that when you were born," Schneider tells him.
"Is it real?" I ask.
Betsy Schneider
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Betsy Schneider
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"I don't know if it's still real," Schneider says, examining the toy, which at one time, at least, did function.
"It's real!" Viktor announces.
"I don't know if it's working," his mother tells him. Finally, she digs up a roll of film, loads the camera, and sends Viktor off to take pictures.
The kid-photograph project morphed into "Photo of the Day," she continues, and it's continued to morph. When she was 4 or 5, Madeleine started appearing clothed some mornings. Soon, it was every day.
She would probably never come right out and admit it, but that had to be a relief for Schneider. After all, there was London.
The thing about London that makes Schneider the maddest is when people tell her she was naive to think that she could show naked pictures of her kids without incident.
She disagrees. When she was still living in London, just a few years earlier, she went through the whole kiddy-porn thing with the police, who saw her work and cleared her at the time. Twice.
First, one of her students in London was hauled in for questioning, after it was discovered she was photographing children she babysat for. (Unlike Schneider years before her, apparently the student did not ask the family for permission.) The student told police that her photography teacher took naked photos of her own kids every day. The police talked to Schneider. They looked at her work and agreed it was fine.
The second incident came in 2001, when Madeleine was about 4. Betsy took her along to the photo store to pick up some film. They were waiting for her. Instead of handing her prints to Schneider, the guy behind the counter gave them to a cop, who arrested her.
Ekeberg came to the station to pick up Madeleine. The entire episode was over in four hours; Schneider had her photos back that day.
So three years later, when her old friend Heather McDonough asked Schneider to be part of a show called Inventory, at the Spitz Gallery, she didn't hesitate. But there were complaints at the opening; Schneider's work went down almost as soon as it had gone up. The mistake, the organizers admit, was calling the media to look for attention.
Schneider was right; the police weren't interested. But the London press was — in spades — and the episode became front-page news 'til another story (train bombings in Madrid) bumped it. By then, the damage had been done, particularly to Schneider's psyche. She says she knows now why famous people fly first-class. On the plane ride home, she could feel the dirty looks. She felt better only after she passed through customs.
(Since London, Schneider has had a show in New York City, which went without incident.)
The night she got home, Schneider brought the kids into bed with her and lay awake thinking, "What if I've done something awful?"
Ekeberg had taken the daily photos while she was gone. The next morning, when she picked up her camera, "I was shaking."
Schneider's continued with the "Photo of the Day," she's continued to photograph her children naked, at times, and she plans to show her work. But as her colleague Mark Klett says, she does ask herself questions. Hard questions.
It's almost impossible to make good work about your kids, Schneider says: "Either it's too saccharine or you're a bad mother."
She feels the mother/child relationship is sensual and complicated. "You're raising someone to take your place; you're also replicating your genes."
She's not sure that being an artist makes her a better parent, but she feels it makes her a better role model.
"It's back to the cliché of living the examined life," she says. "It might make life harder, but it makes it richer."
The studio door opens. It's Viktor again, presumably back with his camera.
"It's very interesting that Viktor's doing this now," she says as the door opens and Viktor enters — camera gone, costume on. "Oh, now he's a pirate!"
Schneider's photographs are basic and honest and, yes, sometimes naked. She disagrees with the fuss. For her, there are so many other images out there that are more troubling.
She's particularly critical of the work of Jill Greenberg, a Los Angeles photographer who made her money with commercial jobs and a name for herself with images of young children crying.
Greenberg's crying photos are stunning — and disturbing. In 2006, Popular Photography asked her how she makes the children cry:
"Mostly we did it by giving them something, a lollipop, and then taking it away. Some would just cry for no reason — my daughter did that; she didn't like standing on the apple box I used for a platform because it was a little wobbly. Some just wouldn't cry at all. For all the kids, I worked really fast. We would book 12 or so for one day, and see who we could make cry. At the end of the day I was not in a good mood. I don't like making little kids cry."
