Photographs
by Mary WysongHaeri
Stéphane Legrand, untitled, digital photograph, 2026. Courtesy of the artist.
PHOTOGRAPHS
By Mary WysongHaerI
SEPT/OCT 2026 | Issue 55
FLASH
I watch my husband of fifty years walk toward me, out of the calm, warm waters of the Pacific. He’d been swimming and is bare-chested. He is a handsome man. Still slim enough. He has little hair on top and in his beard only a few flecks of black. I take his photo. Unposed photos are what I like, catching people unaware. I say people, but really the only person I photograph is Ali. If you look close enough at his photo, you see the shadow of his thick and twisted abdominal scar, acquired as an infant. Ali was the first child in Iran to survive a serious intestinal surgery.
The first night we spent together, Ali explained the scar’s thick ridges as I traced them with my finger, my head upon his shoulder, breathing the faint honeysuckle of his cologne. We lay upon a mattress on the floor, and he’d lit the room with candles, so many candles, candles in glass because there were also books, lots of books. Russian novels and Kierkegaard and Hesse. Literature I read but whose subjects seemed as far away as the Arabian Nights. Like Ali.
It’s a surprise, getting old. You wouldn’t think it, but it is. Aches and pains abound. His back. My arthritis. Headaches, both of us. And you would also think, because he’s four years older, that we should plan for me living on alone, after him, after his death.
I try to imagine Ali gaunt like my grandfather. Or delusional like my father, reaching out for ghosts from his hospice bed. But striding toward me on the beach is a good-looking man. A man of mystery. A man I sometimes cannot get along with. A man from a vastly different culture. A man I love, for whatever love means.
Mary WysongHaeri lives and writes in Portland, Oregon, the state where she grew up. Though she's lived in other countries and other states, she always seem to end up where she started. She does have an MFA from Antioch University, and publications in Silk Road, Crab Orchard Review, The Hong Kong Review, and others.
Stéphane Legrand is a photographer based in Toronto, Canada, originally from the coastal region of Normandy, France, where he began his photography journey capturing the area's scenic shores. After moving to Paris to pursue a master’s degree, he spent two years immersed in the city’s unique atmosphere before relocating to Toronto in January 2013 to gain international work experience. It was there that he created his first time-lapse video, initially as a way to share his new surroundings with family and friends back in France. Encouraged by the positive response, Stéphane developed his interest in time-lapse photography, exploring new techniques and refining his craft.