©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.’
