ยฉ Vittorio Storaro
The Palette Decides the Project
When a photographer tells me “I work in color” he has already stopped thinking. The choice between black and white and color is the most superficial layer of the conversation. Underneath there is a question few photographers ask themselves. What chromatic function does this project have, is it dominant or marginal, is it uniform or shifting, is it an alphabet or a tint.
Vittorio Storaro, first Oscar in 1979 for Apocalypse Now, summed up his craft like this. Cinema is not painted, it is written with light. It is a practical distinction, color as decoration is a different job from color as narration. In Apocalypse Now Storaro works with a reduced palette, forced complementaries, the yellow of napalm against the green of the jungle. The film moves through those two colors and the viewer does not register how it happens.
The average photographer’s mistake is to confuse color with subject. He thinks the camera took a color, and then in post he adjusts it or leaves it. The authorial photographer does the opposite. Color enters the frame because it was decided beforehand, even if only as a tendency of the project. Storaro avoids wide palettes because they scatter the few colors chosen. A photographer who puts everything on the table is saying without realizing it that he had no project in mind, he had a subject.
The authorial question is not B/W or color. It is what chromatic function this project has, and whether it shifts or stays uniform from beginning to end. Without an answer, color is a tint. With an answer, even a small one, it is a tool.
A test at the table. Take your last thirty photographs from the project. Is there a temperature that holds, a palette you carry as an underlying signature? If each one goes its own way, you have a set of photographs. If they share a recognizable chromatic agreement, even a low one, you have a project. The difference is the decision you noticed.
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.