ยฉ Trent Parke
Which One Is the Photograph?
A color photograph and its black and white version are not the same image in two outfits. They are two different photographs that share one negative. One is about the relationship between colors, the other about form, gesture, the weight of the grays. And yet they reach you, and they reach me, portfolios with the same scene in both versions, side by side, as if showing more were enough.
Showing both looks like generosity, giving the viewer more to choose from. That is exactly the trap. You are asking whoever looks to make the choice that was yours to make. Which of the two is the photograph? You know, or you should, because that decision is the heart of the work. A portfolio is a set of choices already made, and two versions side by side only show where you have not arrived yet. Showing both makes sense only when the doubling is the point, a diptych where the difference between them is the real subject. Outside that case, what is left is indecision, displayed as if it were a choice.
Underneath there is an old confusion about black and white. It gets pressed like the last box in a menu, with the photo already taken, when it is a way of seeing that works in the eye while you shoot. Someone who sees in black and white watches the light and the volume as they raise the camera. Someone who postpones the choice hopes the image will improve by changing its skin, and it almost never does. The camera records, the eye chooses.
Try this in front of your own photographs. Take the one you think works both ways and ask yourself which of the two is the photograph and which is only the same negative developed another way. If the answer comes at once, show that one and keep the other in the drawer. If it does not come, you have not seen that photograph yet, and no print will save it. Deciding which of the two is yours is already much of the work.
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.