ยฉ Brett Weston
The Print Is the Work, the File Is Material
Carmel, California, December 16, 1991. Brett Weston turns eighty, lights the fireplace at home and tosses in most of his negatives, a lifetime of plates and rolls, sparing only a few exceptions of historical value. “The prints are posterity, not the negatives”, he tells those present. He is not dying, he is declaring that his work coincides with the prints he has made.
Between work and matrix there is a physical difference, not a preference. Negative, raw file, jpeg, scan are matrices, information that can be reproduced. A print is an object, it has a chosen dimension, a chosen support, a weight, a margin, a signature. The photograph as a thing in the world is called a print, and everything you hold before is matter from which it can be made.
The distinction seems old and weighs today more than before, when the average photographer says “I have fifty thousand photographs” showing a hard drive and is confusing matrices with works. Your real body of work is the fifteen prints from the book three years ago, the twenty delivered to a gallery, the six on the walls at home. Everything else is working material, just as for Weston the unprinted negatives were material. The problem is not having many files, it is calling them work.
Test at the table. If tomorrow all your digital files disappeared and you were left only with the prints you have made and signed, how many photographs do you own? How many do you own as objects that exist in the world, not how many you have shot. The difference between those two numbers is the distance between having done something and having decided it.
Weston burned his negatives in 1991 with no rhetoric of legacy, he was still alive and productive, and the decision was about the present, not about after. The work is the print and the matrix is material, for anyone shooting today the same principle applies without the need of fire. Your work is not what you have shot. It is what you have printed.
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.