ยฉ Jim Goldberg
The Photograph That Comes Back
Of all the photographs you have taken of people, how many went back to those people? It is a simple question, and few stand the answer. We shoot, select, publish, sometimes sell, and the subject remains the only one who never sees a thing. The relationship ends at the click, everything after happens behind their back.
Jim Goldberg built a whole body of work on that after. Between 1977 and 1985 he photographs the rich in their homes and the poor in welfare hotels in San Francisco, then puts the prints in his subjects’ hands and asks each to write on them, in pen, what they see of their own life. Rich and Poor comes out in 1985, and those crooked lines are worth as much as the images. The photograph stops speaking only for the photographer, the person answers from inside the picture.
The gesture is harder than it looks. Showing your photo to the person inside it is the most uncomfortable test there is. In front of them the image is no longer only yours. What for you was a figure in a composition is their face, their room, their moment. If the photograph holds up to that gaze, it holds up to any wall.
As an editor I see it in the projects that arrive. Documentary projects years long, the same people photographed dozens of times, and when I ask if the subjects have seen the work, the answer is usually an embarrassed silence. It is not bad faith, it is a habit of the trade. The flow runs one way only, from the street to the archive to the public. Returning a print reverses the current once, and once is enough to shift where you stand when you look at your own work.
This time it is not an exercise, it is a question to keep in your pocket. Think of someone you have photographed. If tomorrow you put that print in their hands, what would happen, to them and to the photo? You do not need to do it to learn. If the idea makes you curious, the photograph is probably sound. If the idea makes you uneasy, you have just learned something no edit would have told you.
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.