ยฉ Emil Gataullin
Returning
This is a personal note. But it comes from the same place where Eyeshot was born: the idea that what truly matters is not what passes, but what endures.
For those who live far from the place where they grew up, returning home is never just a journey. It is a test.
A shift in rhythm that unsettles the balance built elsewhere and, above all, the way bonds have been kept alive over time.
Over the course of the year, one grows accustomed to a form of distance that seems to work. Relationships are sustained through messages, calls, brief updates. Everything holds together, yet is rarely experienced in full. Then one returns, and that distance gives way. Encounters become more direct, conversations longer, gazes less guarded. Not because everything is easier, but because there is no longer any way to remain on the surface.
Seeing lifelong friends again means reckoning with time. With what has changed and what has remained. Fragilities emerge that had no space at a distance, difficulties accumulated over the years, weariness that finds no place in the simplified versions of ourselves. But alongside all this, something else emerges as well: the strength of relationships that have endured, that have shed the superfluous and held on to what is essential. Relationships that do not serve to confirm who we have become, but to remind us who we once were and why.
For those who grew up in one place and now live elsewhere, this confrontation often becomes more difficult. It has little to do with nostalgia, and everything to do with an emotional intensity that leaves no room for shortcuts. Relationships become more truthful because they are experienced without filters and, precisely for this reason, they carry greater weight. It is there that a value concentrates, one that rarely manifests elsewhere with the same force.
When the time comes to leave again, one does not carry away a light feeling. One carries away an awareness: the right weight of what truly matters, of what is worth continuing to protect even at a distance.
Leaving does not mean starting over, but deciding what is worth not losing along the way.
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.