ยฉ Don McCullin
When You Pay the Pose
Portfolios arrive from the global south, and inside there are always children. Always the same eyes, the same frontal light, the same direct pose. When you get three or four in the same month, by authors who do not know each other, you realize they are built with the same logic. Those children did not ask to be photographed. They looked into the camera because someone told them to, for a piece of candy.
The name for that thing has existed for forty years, it is called poverty porn. A Danish aid worker coined it in 1981 looking at NGO ads with starving children, and today it has slipped into authorial photography. The translation at the editing table is simple. When you pay a poor child to pose in front of your camera, you’re not documenting, you’re constructing. Documentation records what is there. Construction produces what you want to see.
A poor child is the easiest subject because he cannot say no. He doesn’t know where his face will end up, doesn’t know about copyright, and a piece of candy feels like a fair deal. The same applies to the animal in captivity, sedated and separated from its mother, backdrop for the selfie. The logic is one only, find someone who cannot oppose and call it photography.
When I look at a portfolio the signs show. The frontal pose that repeats, the gaze of someone who has never done it, the light too clean, the background always the same. All signals that the photographer stepped in front and gave something. The clean stolen photograph exists but is rare, and is often dirtier than a staged one.
The three questions at the table are sharp. Could the subject refuse? Was the pose paid for? Did you change the scene to get it? If the answer to one of these does not sound clean to you, that is where the note begins for you. What enters the frame is the power balance between you and the person before you, and it always shows, even when the photographer thinks he has hidden it. Easy photographs are not hard to take, they are hard to sign.
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.