ยฉ Ishiuchi Miyako
The Subject You Run From
You go looking for your subject far away, somewhere exotic, in a life unlike your own. Meanwhile the strongest subject you have is the one you run from, the place you come from and would rather not photograph.
Ishiuchi Miyako grew up in Yokosuka, the town of the large American naval base, in an occupied postwar Japan. As a child she had learned to fear the soldiers and the district of their bars, where the Americans went with the local women. It was a city she hated, one she had sworn never to return to. And yet, between the autumn of 1976 and the spring of 1977, she went to photograph it on weekends, driven by her mother, who worked as a driver for the American military. Out of that return came the work that in 1979 made her the first woman to win the Kimura Ihei award. She had even taken her mother’s maiden name: the subject was her, before she raised the camera.
When you photograph a place that has nothing to do with you, the picture stays on the surface, you see what anyone passing by would see. When you photograph something you have an open account with, you reach a place no one else can get into, because that bond can’t be improvised or faked. It’s your history that carries you where other people’s photographs stop.
Think of the place you avoid photographing. The house you grew up in, the street you tie to something bad, a member of your family, your own body. That resistance you feel is the signal, not the obstacle. You steer clear of that subject because it touches you, and it touches you because it’s yours, because there’s something in it you haven’t closed yet. The easy pictures are where you risk nothing of your own.
You don’t have to go back to Yokosuka. You have to find your own Yokosuka, the place or the person you have unfinished business with, and point the camera at it while you’re still uncomfortable, before you’ve calmed down. The photograph only you can make isn’t the most beautiful or the most distant. It’s the one you’d rather not make.
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.