ยฉ Thomas Hoepker
Eyeshot Podcast, Beyond the Screen
For a few months now, instead of talking about photography, weโve started talking with the people who make it, think it, and push it forward. It didnโt begin as a โpodcast project,โ but as a simple need: to sit across from someone we respect and stay there long enough to move past the three standard interview answers. On YouTube, these conversations already exist, with faces, pauses, tics, gestures. For us, above all, they were exactly that, shared time, not content.
Listening to them all again now, what stands out isnโt the names, but the fractures. The moment an editor stops speaking in institutional language and admits doubt. The instant a photographer confesses theyโre no longer sure where their work ends and where othersโ expectations begin. The laughs, the contradictions, the points no one agrees on. Thatโs when we realized these chats werenโt just โEyeshot material,โ but something that was also working on us, on how we think about books, open calls, workshops.
From today, this same journey continues on YouTube and also opens up in audio, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other platforms. Itโs not a change of format; itโs an addition. The video remains, with bodies and expressions. The audio comes alongside it, closer to the ear: the same conversations, but only as voices, hesitations, breaths before answers. Something to listen to while printing, assembling a project, traveling by train, walking alone. If video asks for frontal attention, audio can slip into the day without interrupting it.
This note isnโt an invitation to โfollow our podcastโ as if it were a new catalog product. Itโs more of a provisional thank you. To those who sat on the other side of the table, putting time and thought on the line, and to those who over these months have watched and listened, commented, criticized, shared. What weโre building isnโt a series of episodes; itโs an archive of conversations that we hope, in a few years, will be able to tell not only the story of photography today, but also its doubts, its fatigue, its obsessions. Now you can carry them with you however you like, on a screen or through headphones.
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.