© Carolyn Drake
What Makes a Portfolio Curable
Every week I receive portfolios. Some contain thirty beautiful photographs. Right colors, perfect timing, solid compositions. I look through all of them. Then I close them. They’re good, sometimes even excellent, but I can’t tell where they’re looking at the world from.
A portfolio becomes curable when it has a position. A direction running through the images, even the imperfect ones. Not a theme. Everyone has a theme. A position is the answer to a question nobody asked you. Why this. Why now. Why you.
Whoever sends thirty strong photos without a position sends a résumé. Whoever sends fifteen imperfect photos with a position sends a project. The difference isn’t visible in a single image. It shows in the sequence: what you put first, what you removed, what you chose not to show.
The editor’s work begins only when the position is there. Without it, there’s nothing to refine. There’s only choosing, and choosing for you is not my job. With a position, even a weak one, you can work. You cut, you reorder, you discover what the images were trying to say before you lined them up out of habit.
There’s a test I always run. I cover the photographer’s name and look at the series. If after ten images I can’t form a sentence about what the work is trying to say, the portfolio isn’t curable. It’s a judgment on direction, not on quality. And direction can’t be added later. Either it was there when you started shooting, or it isn’t.
A curable portfolio has a flaw that makes it recognizable. It doesn’t try to please everyone. It has an angle. A stubbornness. Something it excludes. When everything is included, when every photo is there because it’s beautiful, the work says nothing. It only says: I know how to photograph.
Knowing how to photograph is not a project. It’s a starting point.
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 Sidibé’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.