Gaming with [Character] — N64 Era, 1997

A scanned photograph placed on a cream linen tablecloth with soft wrinkles, the photo filling nearly the entire frame with only a thin natural border visible on all sides. The photograph depicts: Grungy analog flash photo, Fuji QuickSnap disposable camera, circa 1997. Two friends — a young person with short dark hair and warm brown skin mid-word saying something to whoever's taking the photo, and a Black girl with tight cornrow braids and small gold stud earrings wearing a baggy purple basketball jersey over a white long-sleeve tee throwing a peace sign with her free hand — sprawled on a brown corduroy couch in a wood-paneled basement den, both gripping chunky Nintendo 64 controllers, the translucent purple ones with the three-pronged handle. On the TV — a 27-inch Magnavox CRT on a fake-wood entertainment center — GoldenEye 007 runs in four-player split-screen, the Facility level, tiny pixelated characters visible. The basement: exposed ceiling joists, a pizza box from Domino's balanced on the couch arm, a stack of Nintendo Power magazines, a boombox on a shelf with a No Doubt CD half-ejected. Warm tungsten cast from the flash mixing with the cool CRT glow. Red-eye, soft motion blur on the peace sign hand, heavy grain, slightly overexposed faces with the background falling into murky shadow. Natural skin texture with subtle pores and micro-imperfections, organic asymmetry in features. --ar 4:5