Editing is a maddening process. I’m currently stuck in a quagmire with my ‘ESVT’ edit. I’m missing something. Spontaneity? Jazz? The flow? To alleviate the tension I’ve decided to riff on the photographs I’m looking at right now. Not all of them work or will make the edit, but a blog seems to be the perfect place to play with editing. Photography’s relationship with the web seems uncomfortable at best. It’s the wild wild west and we’re living through it, this is the time to experiment.
“But there was something to be said for a life in the moment; for a dalliance in California, for concerts and failed screenplays, for a little fun before the fall. And the truth is, we were always more purposeful – more responsible – than our fathers and uncles and grandmothers realized.”
©Bryan Formhals
I fear portraiture more than any other type of photography, except perhaps for the type where bombs, guns and insurgents are involved. That aside, if you’re working in the fine art or documentary territory I can’t really think of anything more confounding, perplex and complicated than portraiture. If you’re shooting candidly it’s all about instincts, reacting, anticipating, getting lucky, failing and shooting a shitload. Ok, that’s simplistic too, but something like that. If you’re shooting landscapes it’s really about wandering and making the shapes work out. And of course, no matter what, it always helps to attempt to work at the highest level and have an idea of the type of photographs you want to live with.
With portraiture, there’s no escaping, no ignoring, no hiding and waiting for something to happen. It’s you and the subject. And you better know what you’re doing otherwise you’re going to fuck up the dynamic. An uncertain photographer staring at you with a camera can be incredibly uncomfortable. As if standing or sitting for a portrait isn’t uncomfortable enough. So yeah, it’s challenging and there’s so much more than the simple act of photographing involved. It’s about an ephemeral relationship.
©Bryan Formhals
I have a problem that perhaps many other photographers may also have. Even though I’ve edited and reviewed my archive time and time again, I keep going back looking for new insights. When I left for New York I was deep in the middle of editing my ESVT project and thought that I was close to finishing it. After all, there would be no more new photographs to add, and I’d set my mind on a general structure for the work. But then I left for New York and was displaced from my files for three months.
By that time I was well into shooting my new project ‘Drift.’ Wandering around the city photographing gave me plenty of time to reflect on the ideas I had for the ESVT edit. There were photographs I could remember, and many, many others that I had escaped my memory. I found myself sculpted the work from a philosophical point of view without actually looking at the photographs. What I could remember would stay. I started to sculpt the project in my mind, sensing a shorter, tighter edit. I would sketch words and phrases in my mind, packaging them together in the conceptual framework of the project. I was moving forward by virtue of detaching myself from the images.
Of course, much of this sentiment may have to do with the blah feeling I have toward a few photographs I was confident would be in the edit. It seems no matter what we want to think, the number of photographs that actually pass the test of time will continue to decrease as you age. This is a primary motivation for finishing a project. My feeling is if I can put finish this project to my satisfaction I’ll start to view it as a single piece and think less about the individual photographs contained within. ‘The end is important in all things.’
West Hollywood, Calif. – ©Bryan Formhals
My computer along with all my files has arrived in New York, so now it’s time to get back to editing ESVT. It’s been good to think about the edit without actually slaving away with the images. My ideas about the project have evolved since I last took a look at the master edit. It was also kind of odd and refreshing to take a look at the photographs from my last days in LA and road trip back to Minnesota, which constitute the opening segment of ‘Drift.’