ยฉ Berenice Abbott
Straight Photography Is Not a Preset
Straight Photography, as I see it, isnโt a chapter in art history. Itโs the moment when a group of photographers gets tired of using the camera as a disguise. No more soft veils over things, but the decision to look at them with an almost uncomfortable sharpness, all the way through.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, many wanted photography to look like something else: painting, engraving, a blurred dream. Straight Photography says: enough. If we have a tool that can record the world with a precision never seen before, why should we dirty it to make it resemble something else? This wasnโt blind faith in โobjective reality,โ but a stubborn trust in the idea that a clean, direct image could stand both as evidence and as form.
The shift that interests me is this. The more you believe in photography as an autonomous language, the less you can hide behind style. If you give up mists, decorative blur, post-production tricks, what remains is your ability to choose a point of view, a moment, a distance. Itโs an aesthetic that takes away your alibis rather than giving you any. You can no longer say โit works for the moodโ; either it holds together as itโs built, or it collapses.
Today no one needs to found a new group with a manifesto printed on paper. But the question they were asking is still there, only now it runs through presets, filters, film simulations. How much of your โstyleโ really helps you see better, and how much is just makeup to keep everything prettier, more digestible, more social-friendly? How often do you use post-production to remove from the frame exactly what makes you uncomfortable to face?
Perhaps continuing the lesson of Straight Photography today means hurting a little more. Accepting that some light is ugly, some streets are messy, some faces are split in half by shadows that are impossible to โfix.โ And choosing to keep them in anyway. Not out of nostalgia for the past, but out of respect for the present. The camera is far more powerful than it was back then, and the ways to soften everything are endless. Precisely for this reason, every time you choose not to do so, youโre saying something very specific about how you want to stand in the world, not just about how you want your photographs to look.
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.