ยฉ Steve McCurry
What’s missing from my work?
It’s the question I get most often. It comes after months of work, sometimes years. The person asking usually has the photographs already. They have the technical quality, the visual consistency, sometimes even a solid body of images. And yet something doesn’t hold.
The answer they don’t want to hear is this: you’re not missing a photograph. You’re missing a direction.
A portfolio with 30 strong photographs can still fail as a project. It happens more often than you’d think. The images are good one by one, they hold the gaze, but placed together they go nowhere. There’s no trajectory. No point from which everything departs and no point toward which everything converges. Scrolling through the work, you feel like you’re going in circles.
The difference between a set of good photographs and a project is one thing, a position. A project knows where it’s looking from. It doesn’t have to declare it, no manifesto is needed. You can tell from the first image, from the sequence, from what was left out. A set of good photographs, on the other hand, shows everything the photographer can do. It’s a rรฉsumรฉ, not a story. And nobody flips through a rรฉsumรฉ twice.
As an editor I see it immediately. When a body of work has a position, the photographs talk to each other. When it doesn’t, every image competes with the one next to it for attention. None opens, none closes, none serves as a pivot. It’s a wall. I’ve seen portfolios of ten images with more direction than portfolios of a hundred. The number is irrelevant. What matters is knowing where you’re going.
Quality is not the problem. Quality today is a starting point, not a destination. The problem is knowing what you’re trying to say and having the courage to remove everything that doesn’t say it. Including the photographs you love the most.
Before sending a portfolio, ask yourself: where am I looking from? If the answer isn’t clear to you, it won’t be clear to anyone.
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.