ยฉ Joel Meyerowitz
UNESCO, Photography & Culture
The recent news of Italian cuisine being recognized as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage affected me more deeply than I expected. Not out of national pride, but because it speaks to something both simple and difficult at the same time: the value of what is repeated every day and, precisely for that reason, risks being taken for granted.
Italian cuisine is not a collection of outstanding recipes. It is made up of daily practices, of gestures learned by observing other gestures, and of mistakes corrected over time. It only lives if it is practiced. If it stops being practiced, it ceases to exist. No form of recognition can save it from this.
This is where, for me, the connection with photography becomes evident. Photography, too, is born from the ordinary. From common situations, from moments that do not ask for attention yet quietly take place. Photography, like cooking, transforms everyday experience into collective memory. It preserves what might otherwise disappear and returns it in the form of a narrative.
The UNESCO recognition reminds us that cultural value does not lie in the exceptional, but in transmission. But transmission is not automatic. It can be interrupted. It can be emptied of meaning. It can become mere aesthetics, mere surface, mere habit without awareness. This applies to cooking, and it applies to photography.
When photography is reduced to an automatic practice, an accumulation of images, transmission weakens. Without a critical gaze or a conscious choice, everything becomes the same. At that point, we are no longer building memory, but saturation.
As publishers born in Italy, we feel this responsibility directly. Editorial work is not about filling pages, but about choosing. Giving time to images. Accepting exclusion. Defending a form of photography that has roots, that has context, that does not live on effect alone.
This recognition is not a celebration to be filed away.
It is a concrete reminder.
Culture exists only if someone takes care of it, every day, through the choices they make.
Even when choosing means removing, slowing down, or going against the current.
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.