The Subject Before the Image – Eyeshot

The Subject Before the Image

“For me, the subject of a picture is always more important than the picture itself. And more complicated.”

Here, Arbus says one thing we regularly place in captions, however nearly by no means put into apply: the middle just isn’t the {photograph}, it’s the individual. “More important” signifies that an ideal {photograph} just isn’t sufficient if it betrays the individual you’ve positioned inside it. “More complicated” signifies that the tough half just isn’t getting the second or the composition proper, however sustaining an encounter with somebody with out lowering them to a handy determine inside your body.

For those that work in road and documentary pictures, that is nearly an insult, as a result of it touches the purpose we are likely to keep away from: the topic just isn’t uncooked visible materials, however an individual with a life that continues after your shot. You can’t inform your self that you’re merely “observing.” You resolve the place you stand, how shut you get, how lengthy you keep, what you select to indicate and what you allow out. All of this alters the topic, simplifies them, compresses them, enlarges them. This is the place pictures that “work” turn out to be harmful: the stronger they’re, the extra they threat overlaying up the complexity of the individual inside them.

If you settle for that the topic is extra difficult than the {photograph}, the work begins earlier than the clicking and ends after it. It begins in the best way you enter another person’s house, within the time you are taking to grasp the place you’re, within the option to insist or to step again. It ends within the modifying course of, if you resolve which faces proceed to flow into and which don’t. The query is not “Is this a good image?” however “What am I doing to this person by turning them into an image?”

Perhaps that’s the entire level: how typically can we use pictures to simplify a topic till they not disturb us? When you have a look at your pictures of individuals, how a lot house do you allow for his or her complexity, and the way a lot do you narrow away as a result of it doesn’t match the format, the mission, the story you already had in thoughts? If the topic comes earlier than the {photograph}, we must always most likely really feel extra uncomfortable than we do.

Marco Savarese
Editor-in-Chief