{"id":138275,"date":"2019-07-25T11:00:23","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T15:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=138275"},"modified":"2019-07-25T10:33:44","modified_gmt":"2019-07-25T14:33:44","slug":"the-silhouette-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Silhouette Artist"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

\u00a9 Riko Best – stock.adobe.com<\/p><\/div>\n

When I was twenty, a man broke into my bedroom in the middle of the night. He\u2019d busted the dead bolt of the house, where I was alone inside. Asleep. The doorknob clicked; I stirred. A yellow glow pooled into the dark of my room. By the light of the hallway, this stranger saw me in my underwear. They were leopard print. He was the first man to see me that way. All I could see of him was a silhouette.<\/p>\n

His shadow: hazy, rough. It sighed. Said, \u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n

He shut the door, and then I heard nothing. It was 2001. I had no phone, no computer, no fire escape. Petrified, I waited the four hours until dawn to open the door and found that he had gone. All he left behind was a broken dead bolt and a trail of muddy footprints turned red by North Carolina clay.<\/p>\n

By midmorning, a police officer arrived and asked me to describe the man. Tall, short. Fat, thin. Old, young. I told him I couldn\u2019t see more than a shadow. My glasses were out of reach. The light had stunned me.<\/p>\n

Surely, the officer said, I could remember something\u2014I could, perhaps, draw his silhouette.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t understand,\u201d I answered. \u201cHe saw me, but I couldn\u2019t see him.\u201d<\/p>\n

This, more than anything else, is what still haunts me: All I have are questions about that night. He has all the clarity. <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

A silhouette artist can cut a portrait in under two minutes. A traveling silhouettist told me this last February, as she cut a profile of my four-year-old son at Howell Living History Farm in New Jersey. Historians say the allure of the form is in the paradox of black against white\u2014what appears on the page, as well as what doesn\u2019t. In her introduction to Black Out: Silhouettes Then and Now<\/em>, National Portrait Gallery Director Kim Sajet puts it like this:<\/p>\n

\u201cConsider black versus white, what is seen versus what is not seen, the positive space of the paper versus the negative space of the cutout. To \u2018black out\u2019 can, of course, mean to temporarily lose consciousness, vision, or memory, but it can also be defined as keeping something\u2014or in this case, someone\u2014in the dark, or even erasing them from history.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can tell a lot from a shadow, it turns out.<\/p>\n

When a silhouettist cuts a profile, she makes two copies: one for her subject, and one for herself. In other words\u2014one public, one private. It seems so simple, to carve the dark memory of someone, paste it onto brilliant white paper, to see the outline develop in stark relief.<\/p>\n

Two minutes, and it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

For over ten years now, I\u2019ve been trying to write about what happened the night of that break-in. Like Peter Pan\u2019s shadow, the memory has a mind of its own. At times, it clings to me\u2014usually when I have to leave home after nightfall. I rush to lock the door to my car; I fumble with my keys. Panic sets in when headlights trail me in the rearview mirror. But when I set myself the task of writing the memory down, it scatters. Refuses to be collected into any knowable shape. There is so much I remember clearly\u2014the light turning on, the red footprints leading to my room, the black soot the police left behind after they\u2019d dusted for fingerprints\u2014and one thing I don\u2019t. Him.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

I also remember this: calling my mother just the week before, telling her that this was fun<\/em>. I\u2019d gotten an internship at IBM in Raleigh for the semester, and I loved having an official voice mail with my name on it, cc\u2019ing people on emails, paying for my dinner with the paycheck in my pocket, and having a roommate, Sarah, who also worked at IBM.<\/p>\n

Sarah, the only person I knew when I arrived. She owned the townhouse we shared. Our silhouettes: similar. You two look so much alike<\/em>, everyone at work said\u2014my manager, Sarah\u2019s officemate, and John, the temp who worked down the hall. The morning after the break-in, the police figured our matching height, long hair, and fair skin was what led the burglar to us. He thought we were the same person.<\/p>\n

Sarah often spent the night at her boyfriend\u2019s place across town. The detective reasoned that the intruder had watched her leave at dusk and assumed the house was empty.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s probably been watching you for a long time,\u201d he said to me. \u201cAnd you surprised him as much as he surprised you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarah hadn\u2019t wanted to contact the police.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t take anything,\u201d she said, after arriving home and inspecting the broken dead bolt on the front door. \u201cSo there wasn\u2019t a crime.\u201d<\/p>\n

She called her mother, who insisted we call 911.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe I have to miss work for this,\u201d Sarah said, as we waited for the squad car. \u201cI hate that this happened to me, just because I\u2019m a woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t happen to you<\/em>, I wanted to say, though I knew it wasn\u2019t fair. It happened to me<\/em>. Even Sarah had started to conflate her experience with mine, just as everyone else had.<\/p>\n

Other details: We paid three hundred dollars to have Stanley Steemer clean the red clay from the carpets. We spent the afternoon scrubbing black dust from door handles and light switches. Our new security system beeped, and the police said the case would probably never be solved.<\/p>\n

The intruder didn\u2019t take anything, Sarah said.<\/p>\n

Didn\u2019t he?<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The first recorded silhouette was drawn in ancient Greece by the daughter of Deburiades, on the night before her lover left for war. It\u2019s said that she held up a candle to his profile and drew it into a stone wall with a piece of charcoal. It\u2019s also said that her father, upon seeing the drawing and admiring it, took it upon himself to perfect it.<\/p>\n

It was hers, first, but Deburiades couldn\u2019t help but leave his fingerprints on it. Even then, there were two versions of the same silhouette\u2014one private, for the daughter, and one dressed up by her father, for a crowd.<\/p>\n

So let me try. Here\u2019s a portrait of me, a few months after the break-in, for you<\/em>:<\/p>\n

I started to ghost everyone around me. I stopped going to church, and didn\u2019t show up at get-togethers with the few friends I\u2019d made. I slipped out of work at four o\u2019clock\u00a0to be home in time to watch \u201cSister, Sister\u201d by four thirty. I began telling people I was allergic to sugar, which wasn\u2019t true. I signed up for a ballet class, which I couldn\u2019t bring myself to attend.<\/p>\n

My father called to tell me that this \u201cthing\u201d had me around the neck. He meant the burglary\u2014if it could be called that. My supervisor stated that she was satisfied with my work, but I wouldn\u2019t be asked to return for full-time employment. I wanted to change universities. I wanted to switch majors. I just wanted out<\/em>. Press reset. Go. To run from my memory the way I couldn\u2019t run from the intruder.<\/p>\n

There was one friend\u2014John, the temp at the office\u2014who listened to me. I confessed to him that I was afraid to leave the house. If I got a flat tire, what would I do? Who would I call?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can call me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Then weeks later, John told me that sometimes, late at night when he couldn\u2019t sleep, he called my work voice mail just to hear the sound of my voice. He meant it as a compliment. I took it as an attack. How long had he been watching me? I told him I never wanted to speak to him again.<\/p>\n

And now a portrait of me, for myself<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Almost everyone who heard about the break-in insisted on telling me how lucky I was\u2014and it was this, more than anything else, that stalled my grief and drove it deeper. The truth was, I did feel lucky. I also felt targeted. It was profoundly selfish of the burglar to break into my house. It was also startlingly empathic for him to leave after he discovered me. I drew my own profile of him as I needed him to be\u2014a family man, a dad, down on his luck\u2014because that was an easier task than trying to know myself.<\/p>\n

But it was never the burglar I needed to understand, it had always been me. The thing I struggled to see was the shape of what I had lost that night.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

More than fifteen years have passed since the night I woke up to find a stranger in my bedroom. His silhouette faced off against mine, before it fled. I\u2019m still hoping to trace some kind of meaningful narrative from it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a certain kind of silhouette that illumines what\u2019s no longer there. It\u2019s called a hollow cut. The artist slices away the shape of an object until the object itself falls away, and only its frame remains. The frame is then placed on a contrasting piece of paper. We can see the portrait only because of the object\u2019s absence.<\/p>\n

After the break-in, I flew home to Pennsylvania to spend the weekend with my parents. When it was time to return to North Carolina, my mother told me to call her when I got back to the townhouse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll go room by room, on every floor,\u201d she said. \u201cLook in every closet, so you\u2019ll know no one is there.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s anything I want to pull out of those shadows now, it\u2019s this: the memory of how my mother knew just what I needed when I didn\u2019t. I can still hear the sound of her voice encouraging me to open another closed door, to look at every old haunt in the light, to see for myself that it was empty.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amy Jo Burns is the author of the memoir\u00a0<\/em>Cinderland. Her novel,\u00a0<\/em>Shiner, is forthcoming from Riverhead Books.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For over ten years now, I\u2019ve been trying to write about what happened the night of that break-in. Like Peter Pan\u2019s shadow, the memory has a mind of its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1807,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Silhouette Artist by Amy Jo Burns<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"July 25, 2019 \u2013 For over ten years now, I\u2019ve been trying to write about what happened the night of that break-in. Like Peter Pan\u2019s shadow, the memory has a mind of its own.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Silhouette Artist by Amy Jo Burns\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"July 25, 2019 \u2013 For over ten years now, I\u2019ve been trying to write about what happened the night of that break-in. Like Peter Pan\u2019s shadow, the memory has a mind of its own.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-07-25T15:00:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/adobestock_95551712.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"5000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"3000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Amy Jo Burns\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Amy Jo Burns\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Amy Jo Burns\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/cf75fcd8f3fa74dc10c9154646ac462f\"},\"headline\":\"The Silhouette Artist\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-07-25T15:00:23+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/\"},\"wordCount\":1733,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/adobestock_95551712-1024x614.jpeg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/\",\"name\":\"The Silhouette Artist by Amy Jo Burns\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/adobestock_95551712-1024x614.jpeg\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-07-25T15:00:23+00:00\",\"description\":\"July 25, 2019 \u2013 For over ten years now, I\u2019ve been trying to write about what happened the night of that break-in. Like Peter Pan\u2019s shadow, the memory has a mind of its own.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/adobestock_95551712.jpeg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/adobestock_95551712.jpeg\",\"width\":5000,\"height\":3000,\"caption\":\"\u00a9 Riko Best - stock.adobe.com\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Silhouette Artist\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/cf75fcd8f3fa74dc10c9154646ac462f\",\"name\":\"Amy Jo Burns\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/704d1287780ffdb4d6347ac257f0cc0a672b9b9c111907607aaa90a857b499fb?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/704d1287780ffdb4d6347ac257f0cc0a672b9b9c111907607aaa90a857b499fb?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Amy Jo Burns\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/ajburns\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Silhouette Artist by Amy Jo Burns","description":"July 25, 2019 \u2013 For over ten years now, I\u2019ve been trying to write about what happened the night of that break-in. Like Peter Pan\u2019s shadow, the memory has a mind of its own.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Silhouette Artist by Amy Jo Burns","og_description":"July 25, 2019 \u2013 For over ten years now, I\u2019ve been trying to write about what happened the night of that break-in. Like Peter Pan\u2019s shadow, the memory has a mind of its own.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2019-07-25T15:00:23+00:00","og_image":[{"width":5000,"height":3000,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/adobestock_95551712.jpeg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Amy Jo Burns","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Amy Jo Burns","Est. reading time":"9 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/"},"author":{"name":"Amy Jo Burns","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/cf75fcd8f3fa74dc10c9154646ac462f"},"headline":"The Silhouette Artist","datePublished":"2019-07-25T15:00:23+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/"},"wordCount":1733,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/adobestock_95551712-1024x614.jpeg","articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/","name":"The Silhouette Artist by Amy Jo Burns","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/adobestock_95551712-1024x614.jpeg","datePublished":"2019-07-25T15:00:23+00:00","description":"July 25, 2019 \u2013 For over ten years now, I\u2019ve been trying to write about what happened the night of that break-in. Like Peter Pan\u2019s shadow, the memory has a mind of its own.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/adobestock_95551712.jpeg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/adobestock_95551712.jpeg","width":5000,"height":3000,"caption":"\u00a9 Riko Best - stock.adobe.com"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/07\/25\/the-silhouette-artist\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Silhouette Artist"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/cf75fcd8f3fa74dc10c9154646ac462f","name":"Amy Jo Burns","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/704d1287780ffdb4d6347ac257f0cc0a672b9b9c111907607aaa90a857b499fb?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/704d1287780ffdb4d6347ac257f0cc0a672b9b9c111907607aaa90a857b499fb?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Amy Jo Burns"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/ajburns\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1807"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138275"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138283,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138275\/revisions\/138283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}