Part of an artists job is to edit during their lifetime. The fact that she made the decision not to allows full exposure. And the rarity of this collection is that it’s a complete archive: the good, the bad, the learning curve, the thematic themes that cropped up. So it’s actually very fortuitous she didn’t edit. Artists are known to be their own worst editors.
3 Comments
“Part of an artists job is to edit during their lifetime…it’s actually very fortuitous she didn’t edit. Artists are known to be their own worst editors.”
And between those two truths lies the every day conundrum an artist faces. Most photographers edit by first choosing the best out of a take. Given the volume of work a photographer with a digital camera can generate and the shorter turnaround times clients demand this impulse is understandable. Jay Maisel takes and advocates the harder and more tedious route: a gradual winnowing , sometimes spanning multiple editing sessions, of the take til lall that is left are the ones he considers the very best. But good editing requires a learned dispassionate and a somewhat emotionally detached (from the experience of what happened during the shoot ) eye.
Editing is an art form unto itself.
Also see: http://duckrabbit.info/blog/2012/01/its-all-in-the-edit-delete-at-your-peril/
I wonder how many negatives were thrown away by Weston, Adams, Cartier-Bresson, etc. I will venture to say none. I think the practice of getting rid of digital negatives to conserve storage space is a bad practice. How do we learn if we have no reference point. Using Maier as a reference point of how photographers are their own worst editor is erroneous. Maier had no intention of using her photography for purposes other than personal. If she had I am certain we would have seen much of it published or on display while she was alive.
On the other hand though, I have to imagine that Maier was disciplined enough in her practice of photography to get it right in the camera and she saw value in each negative. Could it be that her work is so wonderful because she wasn’t trying to make a living through the use of the camera?
She made some great photographs
Comments are closed for this article!