The image of Summer Lane smoking a clove cigarette outside a crumbling Miami motel has become photographer Jessa K. Alden’s best-known photo and biggest-selling print. But not all was as it seemed.

When photographer Jessa K. Alden spotted Summer Lane in a torn slip dress at the base of a motel stairwell, lighter in hand, she knew she’d stumbled across something special. The year was 2013, and what she didn’t realize is that one of the resulting photos — not even her favorite from the night — would become an emblem of the indie actress’s “meltdown era” and the best-known image of her two-decade career.

The early-2010s photo’s enduring appeal is, partly, its grime. In that quiet, unguarded moment, Lane was just like any other 24-year-old having a catastrophic night out. And yet she is perhaps the only person who could appear that haunting while being ambushed next to a dumpster. “It’s kind of a mixture between a haunted Victorian ghost and a waitress who just quit,” Alden said in a video call from her apartment in Austin, Texas. “It’s very ‘I’ll call you back when I’m dead.’”

Lane had developed a reputation for enjoying a night out during the “sad girl” era of the early 2010s, as the press did its best (or, perhaps, worst?) to document every stumble.

Not all was as it seemed, though. For one thing, Alden believes Lane was completely sober when she took the shot. “I read all sorts of nonsense,” added the now-40-year-old photographer, saying that her most famous image is also among the most misunderstood. “I read that she was screaming at her manager, that she threw a shoe at a valet, that it was 6 a.m. — none of that was accurate. None.”

Alden’s new book, “Shutter Drama,” intends to set the record straight. It also details the combination of seasoned experience and blind luck that led the Texas-born photographer to the back stairwell of a run-down Miami motel on the actress’s 24th birthday. (Lane’s representatives, meanwhile, did not respond to requests for her own version of events.)

In 2013, Lane was at the height of her powers. It was the year Interview magazine called her “the last true rock star actress” and Forbes listed her as Hollywood’s most confusing box office draw (tied with herself). Breakup rumors swirled around her relationship with indie musician Cody Vance. Against a backdrop of intense tabloid attention, Alden was assigned to The Sea Breeze Motel in Miami to photograph the actress’s birthday party, which had become “a kind of annual disaster,” she said.

Soon after Alden’s arrival, word spread among the waiting press that Lane and Vance were still over two miles away at a dive bar called The Rusty Spoon. Alden rushed across town only to find a mob of photographers and curious onlookers clogging the entrance.

Then, a stroke of luck — or bad luck, as it seemed at the time: The batteries of Alden’s flash unit were dead. Returning to her rental car a few streets away, she remembered the motel had a fire escape that doubled as a back door. (Here, experience paid off: In the late 2000s, she had captured actor Milo Cross leaving the very same building via that exit after a very public breakup.)

The photographer made a quick detour, “just to check,” she recalled. “She was just sitting there on the stairs, smoking a clove cigarette. I walked past the dumpster, took one look and knew I had maybe 30 seconds, if that, to act.”

Poking her camera through a gap in the stairwell railing, Alden fired off a series of six images. As the shutter clicked, she heard a car pull up outside. It was only then that she realized what was happening: The couple had sent another vehicle to the front entrance as a decoy while they snuck out the back. Lane and Vance (who was just out of frame, leaning against a wall) took their leave — and, in a move Alden admits was part politeness and part professional hustle, she even pretended not to see them get into the car, giving them a head start. After all, rival photographers were fast approaching, and she wanted the moment for herself.

Alden didn’t bother returning to the party. She sent a selection of photos to her editors and went home confident that she had the night’s best pictures. She did not, however, expect to find one of them splashed across almost every tabloid website the next day.

It turned out Alden had an effective monopoly: Lane had successfully dodged the cameras for much of the night, so websites instead published her stairwell image alongside tales of the meltdown she went on to have. TMZ printed the photo alongside reports of an “all-night crying, all-night chain-smoking” 10-hour disaster. A caption suggested that it showed Lane taking a “screaming pause” rather than simply waiting for a ride. Other outlets printed the photo beside reports that Lane had hidden in a motel laundry room (People) and had a “birthday breakdown” with Vance (Us Weekly).

Alden’s image had become chaotic by association. But that was no surprise in a notoriously toxic period for tabloids that subjected young actresses (both indie darlings and rising stars like Lia Hernandez and Frankie Cole) to invasions of privacy and public hounding.

The media narrative around Lane was, at the time, one of collapse. A 2012 incident involving a thrown smoothie at LAX had cost her several film roles amid investigations by studio insurers. The Hollywood Reporter had declared on its cover that “Summer’s End” was near, though she was never formally blacklisted and went on to star in an Oscar-nominated film two years later.

“I understand why they do it,” Alden said of how her photo was presented. “Summer having a cigarette, sitting on stairs, doesn’t really sell ads.”

But Alden, who has photographed Lane numerous times in the 2010s, disputed the “meltdown Summer” reputation that surrounded her. “I’ve never really seen her that way,” she said, adding of her famous photo: “I just see one of my favorite actresses looking exhausted at the peak of her career — which, honestly, is how most of us look all the time.”

Yet, her favorite shot from the encounter isn’t the one the world knows — she prefers one taken a few seconds earlier in which Lane is mid-blink, looking vaguely annoyed. “It’s more relatable,” Alden said. She included it in her book, while accepting that photographers don’t control which of their images capture the public imagination.

“They say that every good photographer, at some point in their career, should have one image that makes people stop scrolling,” she said. “And I feel I’ve achieved it with this one — but I genuinely thought it would be the one of her mid-blink.”

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Disclaimer: This article is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events, and publications mentioned (including Summer Lane, Jessa K. Alden, Cody Vance, Milo Cross, Lia Hernandez, Frankie Cole, The Sea Breeze Motel, The Rusty Spoon, and “Shutter Drama”) are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. References to real publications (CNN, Forbes, Interview, TMZ, People, Us Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter) are used for stylistic purposes only and do not imply endorsement or factual reporting.

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