ยฉ Josef Koudelka
The Work Before the Name
You tie the worth of your photo to your name being on it. If the credit disappears, it feels like you’ve lost the work itself. Yet the worth of the photo and the worth of the byline are two things, and the second often comes much later, sometimes never.
In August 1968 the tanks of the Warsaw Pact rolled into Prague to crush the Prague Spring. Josef Koudelka was thirty, a theater photographer who had never shot a news event, and for days he photographed the invasion out in the street. The negatives were smuggled out of the country and reached Magnum, in New York. When the pictures appeared, in 1969, they didn’t carry his name but two letters, P.P., the Prague Photographer, to protect him and his family from reprisals. That same year they won the Robert Capa Gold Medal, awarded to an anonymous author. Koudelka admitted he had taken them only in 1984, sixteen years later, when his father had died and there was no one left to protect.
For sixteen years the most important photographs of his life traveled the world without his name and worked just the same. They were strong for what they showed. In that moment who had made them mattered little. The byline is your business, the photograph stands on its own. If you confuse the two, you shoot with an eye on how you’ll look, and that’s already a weaker photo.
Watch yourself while you work. How often do you skip a picture because no one’s there to see you take it, or make it only if you know you’ll sign it, post it, that someone will know it’s yours? Ask whether you’re making it for the work or for the credit. The two sometimes coincide, and when they split apart that’s where you learn what you’re really there for.
I’m not telling you to give up your name. I’m telling you the work comes first and holds without it. Photograph what must be photographed even when no one will know it was you. If the photo is true, recognition is a bonus, and it can come late, like for Koudelka, or never at all. The work is done regardless.
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.