ยฉ Alec Soth
How a Photography Project Really Begins
A photography project does not begin when you take the first photograph. It begins when you decide which one to put first.
It is a choice many photographers make last, almost by accident, after months of work on the selection. Everything is ordered, a sequence is built, and the opening arrives on its own, by inertia. That is a mistake.
The first photograph sets the register for everything that follows. It tells the viewer how to read the images ahead, what to expect, which language they are about to learn. If that entry point is wrong, everything else starts uphill, not because the photographs are weak, but because the viewer has been given the wrong instructions for how to look at them.
Alec Soth said that the choice of the opening image for Sleeping by the Mississippi was neither geographical nor chronological. “It is something that resembles what I imagine composers do.” He opened the book with a houseboat on the water: quiet, lateral, not spectacular. It is not the most powerful photograph in the work. It is the one that puts the viewer in the right place to receive everything else. A composer does not open the concert with the strongest moment. They open with what makes the rest possible.
The most common mistake is exactly the opposite, starting with the strongest photograph. It seems logical, it captures attention, holds the viewer. In reality it works the other way. An image that is too powerful at the opening burns the energy before the work has really begun. The viewer does not yet have the context to receive it properly. You use it up before it can mean anything.
Ask yourself: if the viewer saw only this image, what would they be ready to receive next? Not what would impress them. What would prepare them to look at the rest in the right way.
It is a threshold, not a manifesto. And thresholds, by definition, are never crossed twice.
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.