ยฉ Jacques Henri Lartigue
The Weight of the Name
When you read a photograph with a name you admire underneath, you are no longer reading it, you are confirming it. You look for proof that it’s great because you know who made it. If the name underneath is unknown, you read the same photograph looking for the weak spot. Same object, two opposite readings, and the difference sits in the text below.
The editor receiving portfolios fights the negative version every day, reads with suspicion anyone who sent a PDF with no recognizable name, throws away in thirty seconds work deserving ten minutes. You who train yourself on the great masters fight the positive version, and most of the time you don’t notice, because you read their photographs with the signature bonus, and then go out to imitate it.
Jacques Henri Lartigue started photographing at seven, in 1901. Pioneers’ cars, experimental aeroplanes, women in the Bois de Boulogne, family races in the garden. Private albums, no exhibitions, no publications for sixty years. In 1963 Charles Rado of the Rapho agency shows his childhood photographs to John Szarkowski, recently appointed head of photography at MoMA, who gives him an exhibition. Lartigue is sixty-nine. The photographs from 1908, from 1912, from 1920 have not changed. What changed is that now they had a name above them, and someone willing to read them.
If a photograph you now consider a masterpiece was ignored for sixty years, you have two things to accept. The first is that your ability to read a photograph is less autonomous than you think. The second is that the same dynamic works in reverse when you look at the photographers you have studied, and that name bonus becomes the model you carry outside when you shoot.
Covering the name is easy. Covering the expectations you carry with you is the real exercise. What remains when you remove name and weight is the photograph. The rest is the story you told yourself while looking.
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.