ยฉ Paul Strand
Who Finishes Your Photograph
You think a photograph is done when you have the right print on the table. Then that photograph goes somewhere, a feed, a print run done on the cheap, the page of a book made in a hurry, and what made it yours on the street is lost. Whoever looks at it doesn’t see your print, they see the copy that reached them.
In 1940 Paul Strand gathers twenty Mexican images into a portfolio, Photographs of Mexico. He doesn’t have them reproduced quickly, he chooses hand photogravure, a slow process where the image is etched onto a copper plate and pulled on a press, and he entrusts it to the best printers in New York, in two hundred and fifty copies. He wants the multiple, the object that circulates, to carry the same weight of grays as his prints. In 1967 he remakes it all from the same plates in a thousand copies, to reach more people. Same photographs, same matrix, but the hand finishing of the first is gone, and you can feel it.
Here is something that concerns you even if you never print on a press. Strand treats reproduction with the same care as the negative. Almost everyone tends the shot and then lets the image reach the world however it happens, compressed by a social feed, run on any paper at hand. A crushed tone, though, is a different photograph. The black that drifts to gray, the detail that closes up in shadow, you hunted for them for hours and you lose them in the last step, the one you don’t watch.
Take your strongest photo and look at it where people actually see it, not on your calibrated screen. Open it on any phone, run it on a cheap printer, drop it into a proof page. See whether the thing that makes it yours arrived intact.
If it arrived, the work is done. If it got lost, you haven’t yet decided how that photograph should be seen, and what you don’t decide, the worst medium it meets decides for you. Strand etched the copper so that decision was left to no one else.
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.