ยฉ W. Eugene Smith
You Are Already an Editor
You think you become an author the moment you press the shutter. It is a comfortable illusion. You become an author much later, at the table, when out of the hundred photographs you have you choose twelve and let the rest go. The shutter gathers the material. The choice decides who you are. And yet it is the moment you give the least time to, the one you rush through between one session and the next.
Give the same contact sheet to two photographers and they come back with two different bodies of work. Same images, same day, same light, but one put a certain photo first and the other put another, one kept the silence and the other kept the twist. The difference between them is not in the frames, which are identical, it is in what they had the courage to remove. The signature is there, in what is missing.
W. Eugene Smith went to Pittsburgh for a few weeks and stayed for years, carrying thousands of negatives. When Life asked him for a short, orderly selection, he would not make it by their measure, because he knew the selection was the work and not the waste left over from it. Letting someone else choose meant handing them the author. He paid dearly for it, and the project stayed open forever, but on this he was right.
Almost no one treats the choice as work. People shoot a lot and cut little, they keep everything that came out decent, and so the pile grows while the author never appears. As an editor I see it at once, because a portfolio that hasn’t been cut tells me so before I even look at its content, in the weight, in the number, in the fear of leaving anything out.
So give the choice the same weight you give the shutter. Sit in front of your photographs and, for each one you keep, try to say why you keep it and what it does that the others don’t. If you can answer, you are the editor of your own work, and the editor is the one who signs in the end. If you keep everything, you haven’t yet decided who you are.
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.