ยฉ Everett Collection/East News
Competence Is Not a Setting
Last night I rewatched Chinatown. Roman Polanski, 1974. Cinematography by John A. Alonzo. I watched every scene with the attention of someone who evaluates photographs by trade, and what I saw was a management of light that cannot be improvised and cannot be corrected in post-production. It is decided beforehand. It is studied beforehand. It is known beforehand. Every shot is a choice made in the moment it happens, with no possibility of going back. And you can see it. You can see it in every frame.
Cinema and photography share the same question. Today’s cameras are extraordinary: hundreds of autofocus points, artificial intelligence that recognizes and tracks the subject, stabilization that compensates for movement, sensors that perform in lighting conditions unthinkable twenty years ago. And then post-production, exposure, color, detail, all correctable, all adjustable. Real technology, not rhetoric.
And yet Chinatown is Chinatown.
This is not nostalgia. I don’t believe that before was better as a matter of principle. The question that interests me is a different one. When a camera does automatically what once required a skill, where does that skill go? Does it disappear, transform, shift? And above all, those who were never forced to acquire it, do they even know what they are missing?
Alonzo could not get the light wrong and fix it later. He had to know how to read it before shooting. That constraint was not a limitation, it was the condition that made knowing necessary. Modern technology removes many of those constraints. And in removing the constraints, it also removes some of the questions those constraints forced you to ask. Questions that, once eliminated, are rarely sought again.
Technology helps those who already know where they want to go. It does not replace knowing where to go.
Art does not live in the camera. It lives in those who know what they want before they raise it.
Marco Savarese
Editor-in-Chief
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marco Savarese
Marco Savarese is Editor-in-Chief at Eyeshot, the independent publisher he founded in Italy in 2018. He spends most of his year reading portfolios, judging the Open Call, and editing the magazine catalogue. The reading desk is open, and he takes one-to-one Professional Reviews from photographers working seriously on long-term projects.
Who Finishes Your Photograph
NOTE #210. A photo isn’t finished until it survives to where people see it. Paul Strand chose hand photogravure for Photographs of Mexico so the printed copy kept the tonal weight of his prints. Protect the tone to the end, or the worst medium decides for you.
What the Dark Does
NOTE #209. A face lost in shadow reads as underexposed, a defect to fix. Gordon Willis kept Brando’s eyes in the dark in The Godfather and held it against the studio. Before you rescue a shadow, ask what it does; if you can say it, you decided it.
The Place After
NOTE #208. Of a huge event, often only an ordinary place is left. In On This Site (1996) Joel Sternfeld photographed fifty banal American places where violence happened, each with a line of text. Photograph the aftermath, and let the line do the work.
The Photo Made Together
NOTE #206. Street photography teaches you to steal people; there’s another way. In Malick Sidibรฉ’s Bamako studio the youth chose how to be seen. Before you take someone, ask how they’d want to look, and make the photo together.
Write Your Own Rules
NOTE #205. The thing that improves you most isn’t a new camera, it’s a short list of your own faults. Tony Ray-Jones kept a notebook of orders to himself and it shaped Martin Parr. Write your three rules and keep them in your pocket.
Watch the Master Work
NOTE #204. You don’t learn from a master’s finished prints, you learn from watching them work. In 1962 Joel Meyerowitz watched Robert Frank shoot, quit his job that day, and picked up a camera. Watch the body, not the result.
The Work Before the Name
NOTE #203. The worth of a photo and the worth of the byline are two different things. Koudelka shot the 1968 Prague invasion anonymously as ‘P.P.’ and revealed it sixteen years later. Photograph what must be photographed even when no one will know it was you.
The Subject You Run From
NOTE #202. The strongest subject you have is the one you’d rather not photograph. Ishiuchi Miyako went back to Yokosuka, the occupied base town she was taught to fear, and made it her life’s work. Point the camera where it’s uncomfortable.