ยฉ Elliott Erwitt
The Most Important Project We Ignore
There is a photographic project that almost no one takes seriously, because it serves no purpose.
It doesnโt build a career, bring recognition, or generate visibility. It canโt be monetized or presented. Precisely for this reason, it is the longest, most fragile, and most important project any of us can have: family photography.
It begins when we are children, often without us realizing it, and continues throughout our lives. It doesnโt follow a style or respond to an artistic intention. It tells stories of relationships, absences, the passage of time, mistakes, and losses. It doesnโt need to be โgood,โ because it doesnโt need to convince anyone. It exists for one reason only: to build memory.
It lives outside the language of projects, ambition, and strategy. And this is what makes it uncomfortable. While we spend years thinking about what to photograph, how to do it, and for whom, we neglect the only work that can never be redone. The only one that doesnโt allow second versions, late edits, or reconsiderations.
Family photography doesnโt wait for you to be ready. It happens while you are distracted by something else, while you are chasing ideas, themes, and languages. And when you realize it, it is often too late to recover what you didnโt look at closely enough. It doesnโt ask for rigor, but for presence. Not for technique, but for continuity.
It doesnโt need to become a book, an exhibition, or an archive. It doesnโt need to be shown or justified. It is for you. It exists to remind you who you were, what you went through, what you lost, and what you chose to keep.
The most ambitious photographic project is not the one we build to be seen, but the one we are building without realizing it.
If we are not building memory, then we are only producing images.
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.