ยฉ Mary Ellen Mark
Five Minutes, Thirty-Six Days
Jack Rabbit Slim’s, Los Angeles, a 1950s-themed diner. Vincent and Mia meet for the first time. They talk, drink a milkshake, smoke. At some point Mia says: you know you’ve found someone special when you can just shut up for a minute and comfortably share a silence. The camera doesn’t cut for almost five minutes. Quentin Tarantino, Pulp Fiction, 1994, dop Andrzej Sekula.
No other director would have left that scene whole. Tarantino doesn’t cut because the rhythm of a conversation is the conversation. Inside that rhythm there are also silences, glances, what happens between one line and the next. A conversation is not a succession of information but a form of time.
Photography, almost always, works the opposite way. Anyone working seriously does what Tarantino does. In 1976 Mary Ellen Mark entered the women’s security ward of the Oregon State Hospital and stayed for thirty-six days. The Ward 81 photographs are not moments extracted from the ward, they are the rhythm of the ward. The silences between hours, the television on with no audio, patients combing each other’s hair. Mark photographed the conversation between those women and the space, because she stayed long enough to see it.
For a street or documentary photographer the lesson is direct. The first photo is almost never the photo. The first one is what earns you the right to stay. You have to stay long enough to see how they talk, how they look at each other between sentences. That is the material of the scene, not the opening of the conversation. If you leave after the entry shot, you missed the scene.
It is not the same as waiting for the decisive moment, which is a passive stance. It is the opposite, holding still inside something that seems like nothing, because the rhythm of the scene has already happened and you weren’t seeing it. Tarantino left Vincent and Mia almost five minutes for this reason, Mark stayed thirty-six days in Ward 81, and those five minutes, those thirty-six days were already the scene.
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.