This is a picture I did not take

of a picture of the former head of the FBI, W. Mark Felt, as photographed by Richard Avedon four days after the bicentennial in 1976 for the October 21st issue of Rolling Stone that year, the print pulled from a portfolio of Avedon's called "The Family", housed in the archives of the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona, the print glossy and sleeved in plastic that I peeled back with my cotton-gloved hands to see Felt looking dapper and pressed in suit & tie under Avedon's close-focus and black & white, Felt's mouth closed firmly, as if it had been closed its whole life, tightly pressed around a secret.