Culling the Herd - Part One

Part I - Excuse me, are you going to use that?

One of the hardest parts of photography for me is the reduction process.  I've heard it called "culling the herd"," redaction", "thinning the forest", or "deductive selection."  I think of it starting out feeling like a hair cut and ending with it stinging like dozens of little skin biopsies.

In A.D. Coleman's essay, "On Redaction - Heaps and Wholes, or, Who Empties the Circular File?" from his book Depth of Field -Essays on Photography, Mass Media, and Lens Culture.  He argues for the absolute necessity of this discipline in photography and art. 

For most workers, the ratio of potential images (negatives) to actualized images (prints) is low, as is the ratio of images actualized minimally (as contact and/or work prints) to images approved by the maker for public presentation via exhibition, publication, or other vehicle.

The question of redaction - of "putting in shape for publication"- is therefore a crucial one.  To use a distinction from general systems theory, redaction is what transforms a quantity of images from a heap to a whole.  The ability to redact is a hallmark of artistic maturity.  As the photographer Lonny Shavelson has said, "Photography is about editing.  If you don't edit your own work, you're not a photographer." (Emphasis by original author)

All photographers must go through their images and throw out the ones that don't work.  The first 60% are usually pretty easy for me.  I may feel a little sadness that the image failed and I missed something special, but my heart knows it has to go.

The next 25% feel a bit more personal and painful, kind of like plucking my eyebrows.  I tell myself those are the images I can come back to some day and make something else with even though I almost never do.

The final 10-14% eliminated are very painful.  By that time I've spent hours working on them and trying to either print (if from a negative) or edit (digital) them into something magic.  At some point though I realize  there are not enough tricks up my sleeve to save the image.  It has some fatal flaw I recognize that keeps it from making the final selection.  Each discarded image feels like a chunk of my flesh was ripped off and leaves me raw for a while. 

Why must I put myself through this artistic pain?  Why not just put them all out there and let the viewer decide?  The answer is simple, dilution.  If I put out too many similar images from the same series, they become diluted and the overall punch of the series is diminishes.  The photos taken before and after the prime shot may be very good, but as a set, they can reduce the beauty of the prime one and bring the set down.

Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop. - Ansel Adams

Robert Frank had to do this.  He took over 28,000 photos for his The Americans book.  In the end,  Frank chose just 84 images to show his vision.  That means he discarded 99.7% of his photos to get to his finished product.  At a retrospective of his work last year at the SF MoMA, I saw some of his contact sheets from the series.  I could tell which ones were instantly tossed, which were ok, but should be tossed, which had potential, and which one was the "it" photo.  It would have been painful to make those decisions though because so many could have been "it."  As painful as that may have been for Frank, I doubt he could have done any better than the ones he selected.  He gave us a gift of his sacrifice.  He reduced down to a perfect set of photos that will always represent a perfect set.

As I've mentioned many times before, I don't like the photos taken by Diane Arbus.  Someday I will elaborate on why in a formal criticism of her work.  For now though, let it be simply stated I don't like her photos.  With that said though, there are some aspects of her artistic discipline I deeply respect.  I envy her ability to "cull the heard" down to about 80 or so photos that represent her body of work.  She may have had more if she had not taken her life at the young age of 48, but to have kept her total count that low is true dedication to ensuring only her best work got out there.  Each photo is an iconic representation of her work and is recognizable to the photographic arts community as hers.   I respect her passion to controlling which photos were good enough to share her name.

During the photo shoot I build a pile of images.  During the first review, I begin the reduction of the pile to find the right ones.  Sometimes I get a few true gems. Other times I get no gems.  Either way, I must make sure that my work meets my standards of my artistic vision.  It isn't easy.  If it was, everyone would be an artist.  This leads into my next post...

Part II  - Thinning the "Pixel Forest"*
Why artistic/photographic redaction is more important now than ever before. 

* The term Pixel Forest  comes from a great set of writings by friend Dr. L.  Please read her writing about the digital world we cohabitate.  She sums up the ethereal digital world perfectly.