ยฉ Marc Riboud
Normal Doesn’t Exist
The normal lens does not exist. The 50mm you were told to start with, the one that is supposed to match the human eye, is a factory convention a hundred years old. It is a fine piece of glass. But the reason it is called normal has nothing to do with the way you see.
The factory rule is simple: normal is the focal length close to the diagonal of the format, and on a 24×36 negative the diagonal is about 43 millimeters. The first Leica, in 1925, carried a 50, and the rounding stuck. That is all. It only means that the perspective, on a print viewed at a normal distance, looks neither compressed nor stretched. It speaks about the rectangle of the negative, not about the way you look.
The eye has no focal length. It sees sharply inside a cone of about two degrees, roughly your thumb at arm’s length. Everything else is blurry periphery the brain fills in. While you look at a scene your eyes jump from point to point several times a second, and what you think you see is a running montage. No lens works like that, not even the 50.
The problem is not the 50, it is the advice attached to it. Start with the normal because it is neutral, and you will learn to see without distortion. That advice takes away the first decision of the craft. If normal does not match the eye, then the 50 too is a chosen distance, a way of standing in front of things just like a 28 or a 90. Keeping it out of habit means starting every body of work from a decision you never made.
If the 50 has been on your camera for years, try defending it out loud the way you would defend a 21 or a 90, in front of your own work. If the defense holds, it is your focal length. If the only answer is that it was already there, you have found a decision you never took. A neutral starting point does not exist. You always start from a position, so you might as well decide 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.