Austin Coffee Culture project

that didn’t make the final cut for one reason or another.

Stay tuned for more B-Roll!

I don’t generally like getting “stuff” as gifts.

However,  I do make an exception for photobooks.  This year for my birthday, my in-laws gave me a copy of the new Magnum Contact Sheets edition. Aside from being a wonderfully printed and edited photobook, reading it has been quite  a learning experience.  Looking through the contact sheets of some of the greatest photographers of the past century and “hearing” them talk about said sheets in print, gives an incredible insight into the processes (both “thought” and “technical”) that went into making some of the defining images in the history of photography.  We see the the failures, the attempts, the false starts on an idea, the abandonment and the re-attempt, and finally the success of the final image.  All within a few tiny frames on a sheet of paper.  It gives us context for images that may have influenced our own photographic vision.  It is a window into the minds of artists.  (As an aside, the book also shows the larger prints of the relevant images, not exclusively the sheets. It is very well done.)

Of course with film largely having gone by the wayside, the contact sheet is a relic – an archaic device from a earlier time.  Which in some ways is a shame.  I wonder whether the next generation will be able to look at our work in the same way. When A digital file is deleted, it is gone forever – there is no negative or sheet to retain the truth of the original series.  In another 50 years will photographers be looking at our Lightroom libraries the same way we view contact sheets? And if so, will it have the same effect – the same gravitas? Only time will tell.

I found myself struggling to explain the appeal of the contact sheet to others, mostly non-photographers who found it somewhat odd that I would want a book made up primarily of the “sketches” and “works in progress” of photographers, rather than the final images themselves.   As I was reading through the book however, I came across a quote from Martine Franck, which conveyed it far more eloquently that I ever could.  It relates to the following photo and runs thusly:

I had been commissioned by the newly created Fondation Nationale dela Photographie, then directed by Pierre de Fenoyl, to take a look a the French on holiday.  My friend, the architect Alain Capeilleres, asked me to photograph his recently completed swimming pool, which he had designed for this wife Lucie.

I distinctly remember running to get the image, while changing the exposure on my Leica M3 (I used a 50mm lens and Tri X Kodak film), wondering if shutting down to f.16 at 1,000th of a second would be sufficient.  The sunlight on the white tiles was so intense and almost blinding.  I remember the man in the background doing his push-ups and waiting for him to be in a taut position.  I only had time to take four shots and then the young boy in the hammock turned around and saw me and the picture was gone.

That is the Excitement of taking photographs on the spot.  Intuitively one grabs the image, and an istant later the perfect composition has broken up and is no longer to be seen.  It’s only when you go back to your contact sheets that you can see how the scene developed in time, which is why contact sheets are a neverending source of fascination to those interested in photography.  I chose this precise image because all the elements were in place.  There was no second choice possible.  It was evident from the start which image should be printed, and there was only one such image.  -p.229

When I read this, I immediately understood what Franck was talking about.  More than “understood” – I have experienced it myself (and I’m sure so have most other photographers).  That perfect moment of clarity when one instinctively *knows* that something visually amazing is about to happen.  The rush of anticipation, the fear of missing the moment, the elation when shutter clicks and you *know* that the moment was realized.  It is a moving experience.

The beauty of the contact sheet is that it gives a window into the mind’s eye.  A glimpse of that profound experience through the eyes of the artist.