With the Photographer is a short, funny story by the Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock. A man goes to a photographer's studio simply to have his photograph taken. He expects a picture that looks like him. Instead, the photographer treats his face as a problem to be corrected: he twists the man's head, finds fault with his mouth, ears and eyes, and finally produces a "photograph" in which almost every feature has been retouched or replaced. The narrator cannot even recognise himself — "Is it me?" — and storms out in a fit of tearful rage.
Under the laughter lies a serious point. The story mocks the vanity and false perfection of commercial photography, and defends a person's right to be seen as they really are. Every face, says the narrator, is "my face, the only one I have", and he has learnt to love it. A century later, in a world of beauty filters and photo-editing apps, the story is more relevant than ever.
Foundation first
Four ideas from earlier classes make this story easy to read.
- A short story has a setting (where and when), a conflict (a problem), a climax (the high point) and an ending. Here the setting is a photographer's studio, the conflict is "I want a true picture" against "I want a perfect picture", the climax is the narrator's speech and the snick of the camera, and the ending is his tears.
- Point of view. The story is told in the first person ("I want my photograph taken"). We see everything through the narrator's eyes, so we also hear his funny exaggerations. The narrator is not the author. Stephen Leacock made up this timid man.
- Satire makes people laugh at a fault so that they will think about it. The fault here is the false "perfection" of the photographer's art.
- Irony is a gap between what is said or expected and what really is. The photographer says "it is you" when the picture plainly is not.
Why the story is funny and not cruel. The laughter falls on the photographer's pride, not on the narrator's face. The narrator is a gentle, ordinary man like us, and we are on his side from the first page.
Worked examples
Example 1 (short answer, 2 marks). Say in two or three sentences what With the Photographer is about.
Model answer. A man goes to a photographer to have an honest photograph taken. The photographer finds his face "quite wrong", gives impossible orders and then hands him a retouched picture he cannot recognise. The man scolds him in a speech and leaves in tears.
Why this scores: it names the wish (1 mark) and the conflict with the ending (1 mark) in about thirty-five words. Retelling every event loses time and earns nothing extra.
Example 2 (MCQ with a twist, 1 mark). The narrator of the story is (a) Stephen Leacock himself (b) the photographer (c) an unnamed man who tells the story in the first person (d) an all-knowing outside voice.
Solution. (c). The "I" is a character invented by the author, and he has no name in the story. The 2026 Improvement paper asked the same fact in Q1(vii), where the answer was "An unnamed man".
Why this scores: option (a) is the trap. Always separate the author from the narrator.
Example 3 (short answer, 3 marks). Why is the story called a satire?
Model answer. A satire laughs at a fault in people or in society. Leacock laughs at the photographer's pride and at the habit of "improving" faces until they are false. He does this with exaggeration: the photographer orders the narrator to droop his ears and plans to remove them. We laugh at the photographer, but we also see that a true likeness matters more than an artificial one.
Why this scores: a definition (1 mark), the fault being laughed at (1 mark) and a method with an example (1 mark).
Doubts cleared
Q. Is the narrator Leacock himself? No. The narrator is a made-up character. Write "the narrator", never "Leacock went to the studio".
Q. Is this a sad story or a funny one? Funny on the surface, with a serious idea underneath. The ending, where the narrator weeps, is sad and funny at the same moment. That mixture is the mark of Leacock's humour.
Q. Why does a story about a photograph have so much about waiting and old magazines? Because the waiting room shows the photographer's rudeness and self-importance before he says a word. It also gave the board a MCQ (2025 specimen, Q1(xii)).
Q. Does the narrator ever say what his face looks like? No. We only know that he thinks it has faults ("I know its faults") and that it is "out of drawing". The joke is never about ugliness. It is about whose face it is.
Mistakes to avoid
- Writing that the author "wanted a photograph". It is the narrator who wants it.
- Calling the story a tragedy or a horror story because it ends in tears. It is a humorous satire.
- Writing "photographer" when you mean "photograph" in MCQs. Read each option twice.
Check yourself
- In which person is the story told?
- Name the fault that Leacock laughs at.
- Is the narrator the same as the author? Give a reason.
Answers: 1. The first person ("I"). 2. The photographer's pride and his false idea of perfection, which makes a face unrecognisable. 3. No. The narrator is an unnamed character the author invented; the author is Stephen Leacock.