ยฉ William Eggleston
Eggleston Photographed Everything, He Didn’t Show Everything
Yesterday I received a portfolio of 340 photographs. The photographer wrote, “I photograph everything that strikes me.” I looked at the first thirty images. A peeling wall, a sleeping dog, a woman at the bus stop, a sign bent by the wind, a reflection in a puddle. All well photographed. Nothing that told me why I was looking at those images and not others.
William Eggleston built his career on one principle: everything is worth photographing. In 1976, John Szarkowski gave him the first solo color photography show at MoMA. Critics attacked it. The exhibition showed tricycles, ovens, refrigerators, empty parking lots. Nothing spectacular. Everything, apparently, equal to everything else. And yet each image held an internal tension the others did not. Eggleston was not photographing everything. He was choosing what to show.
In 1989 he published “The Democratic Forest.” The title sounded like a declaration of total openness, every subject worth as much as any other. Eggleston’s democratic forest is not an archive. It is an edit. One hundred and fifty photographs surviving from over twelve thousand shots. The democracy is not in the shooting, but the possibility. The hierarchy returns entirely in the selection.
The portfolio I received yesterday was missing exactly this. Photographing everything is a legitimate position. Photographing everything and showing everything is not. When you don’t choose what to leave out, you don’t have a position: you have a hard drive. Your work is not defined by what you shoot. It is defined by what you decide to let survive.
Eggleston knew this. The freedom to photograph anything did not exempt him from deciding what deserved to exist as an image. It made that decision heavier. Because when the subject sets no limits, the only limit is you.
If you photograph everything, the only thing that defines you is what you choose to show.
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.