ยฉ Bruce Gilden
The Head You Leave Out
When you cut the head out of the frame, something precise happens. The eye stops looking for a face and falls on what’s left, the hands, the bent back, the way a body takes up space. The face is the first thing we look for in a photograph, and the last we let go of. Removing it shifts the center of the photograph from who that person is to what they are doing.
Someone made it his own language. Mark Cohen shot from a hand’s width away, in Pennsylvania, with a wide lens and a flash, and in his pictures the heads almost always end up past the edge. What’s left is a torso, two enormous hands, a knee, a coat worn like armor. That cut is deliberate, it’s the way he sees, and it turns a passerby into pure form and gesture.
The cut fails when the head was needed. If the force of the scene was in a look, in a grimace, in two eyes meeting, and you leave them out, you haven’t subtracted, you’ve amputated. The photo is left maimed, and you can tell it wasn’t a decision, it was the arm raised too high or the step that came a moment early. You threw away the thing worth shooting for, and no bold framing brings it back.
In front of one of your photos with the head cut off, try putting it back. Imagine the missing face and fill it in your mind. If the photo gains, if you suddenly want those eyes, the cut was a loss, the scene was asking for the person and you took away their face. If instead the face, put back, adds nothing and pulls attention away from the gesture you had seen, the cut was working.
Cutting off a face is a way of saying that in that photo what the person does matters more than who they are. That’s a heavy thing to say about someone, and it should be said knowing you are saying it. Do it on purpose, on the body you chose because it speaks for itself, or keep the face. What you cannot do is cut by accident and call it style.
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.