The Real Deal

Acknowledgments

Whenever your life intersects with a good teacher, a pathfinder, it’s a momentous and powerful occasion. For me, Professor Fred Demarest of the Newhouse School photography program was that intersection. He was calm, wise, and lucid, and possessed a bubbling chuckle that still reverberates in my memory. He was not charismatic or dashing—rather, the opposite. He was a bit on the fuddy-duddy side of things, leading him to be called “Uncle Fred” amongst us students. But it was that very avuncular, considerate demeanor which was perfect to channel the unknowing, hubristic, inexperienced, raging id of one certain graduate student in his program, back long ago.

I was a writing major, thus not allowed by rule to take any of the upper-level ...