A Definition Will Not Save Your Work – Eyeshot

A Definition Will Not Save Your Work

Sooner or later, a second arrives when definitions cease being useful. Street photographer, documentarian, artist. At first they serve a function. They orient you, enable you to clarify your self, give others a option to place you. Then, slowly, they begin to weigh you down. They grow to be a body that comes earlier than the picture, as an alternative of rising from it.

Many photographers oscillate between two reverse positions. Some really feel the necessity to outline themselves exactly, as if a task may assure seriousness, legitimacy, coherence. Others reject any definition, as if ambiguity itself had been a type of freedom. In actuality, each positions can perform as defenses. One clarifies too early. The different avoids actual publicity.

The downside is just not selecting a phrase. The downside begins when that phrase turns right into a protect. When it’s used to clarify the photographs as an alternative of testing them. When saying “it’s documentary” is sufficient to droop judgment, or “it’s artistic” is sufficient to take away it from any questioning. At that time, the definition now not accompanies the work. It protects it.

In editorial work, this turns into evident in a short time. Some pictures maintain solely so long as they’re supported by a task. Without that label, they shed pounds, as a result of they haven’t constructed an autonomous relationship with the viewer. Others, as an alternative, proceed to perform even if you don’t know what to name them. Not as a result of they’re obscure, however as a result of they’ve taken a place earlier than taking over a class.

Perhaps the difficulty is just not deciding what you’re. It is knowing whether or not your pictures may stand on their very own in case you stopped saying it. If you take away the identify, the context, the declared intention, does one thing stay that holds? Or is there solely the should be defined?

When {a photograph} wants a definition to exist, it’s typically asking for cover. When it manages to face with out one, ambiguity stops being an escape. It turns into an actual danger. And there, lastly, there’s nothing left to cover behind.

Marco Savarese
Editor-in-Chief