ยฉ A24
The Found Image
The Backrooms trailer is everywhere. The film is directed by Kane Parsons, who is twenty years old. A24 gave him a feature after watching his YouTube videos, with found footage, endless corridors, neon light, no crew, no recognizable budget. Those videos have surpassed 190 million views. The aesthetic was that of something found, not built. Something that resembles evidence more than production. A24 watched those videos and saw exactly what I see when I open a portfolio.
It’s the same quality I look for every day. There are images that look made and images that look found. The first are technically correct, composed, recognizable as photographs. The second have something inevitable about them, as if the photographer arrived at that moment with no other choice but to press the button. You don’t look at them thinking about composition. You look at them thinking about what happened. Those are the images that stay.
The visual language of those videos works for the same reason: grain, imprecise movement, unresolved framing, imperfection as information. It is the grammar of documentary photography. Younger audiences recognize it as real without being able to name it, because it is the language of encountering reality, not staging it. You don’t need to know the history of photography to feel the difference between something built and something found. You feel it before you understand it.
What a twenty-year-old understood before many photographers with years of experience is that imperfection is not a flaw to correct. It is the signal that audiences read as authenticity. Remove it and the image becomes decoration. Keep it and the image becomes proof.
The problem with the portfolios I receive is never technique. It is almost always this: does the image look like a photograph, or does it look like something that happened?
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.