Honest Documents

Just to have a look, I tried yesterday's pictures in black and white. I was overcome by the irresistable urge to make squares. There are some issues at stake here, and I would stutter in conversation with respected documentarist colleagues and friends as I try to justify what I've done. (Let's be clear, we are talking documentary, purely and strictly.)

First, ditching the colour proves that my original intention has been lost. I have created something else in black and white which is other than my original intention. This is not wrong, but different, and the purity of my original vision has been challenged. This exercise goes to show how strong an influence the choice of colour and format is on the way I shoot.

There is always a reason why we press the shutter, and for me it's usually about intuitively feeling a series of elements collaborating in a split second, working a chosen medium to connect these things like wiring a circuit board - electrifying them.

Second, I may have come across something interesting and made some strong compositional shapes by cropping this way, but I have adulterated the intuitive moment I chose to capture that relationship between me, the people in frame, the surroundings, all of it.

It's great to experiment this way, and I like these little squares very much, but they don't describe how I felt at the time, and they present another view now which isn't actually honest - raking over the coals a little. The Seville trip was loaded with all sorts of subtle feelings which I chose to skirt around in panoramic colour. To be armed with medium format black and white would definitely have produced different results, probably much closer up, but at the time I didn't want that expression - it wasn't my intuitive response.

Something pure has been lost. These square frames are entertaining, but they are not alive with the original heart.

Last week an amateur photographer friend, in a moment of absolute bloody-mindedness, claimed the skill of framing in camera and applying a strictly 'no crop' policy was a redundant skill and 'b*******'. Oof... I felt that, but didn't defend myself very well at all, mumbling on about Henri and his decisive moment. I crop, sometimes. But I know it's when I haven't succeeded in the first place. It's always a second best measure when I've failed to summon that initial collaboration in the moment.

This is a feather in the bow of those documentary photographers who argue against cropping, and work hard at shooting precisely the way they experience a place and people right in that moment. Cropping and changing an original always, always, earths the electric charge of your document. I'm sorry bloody-minded friend, but this time it really is all about the moment.


{Today's soundtrack: Freelance Hellraiser}