On format

I spent much of last year fawning over large-format work, putting photographers like Alec Soth and Richard Renaldi and Joel Sternfeld and Stephen Shore on a higher level than others (and can you blame me?). A few months ago, I bought Stephen Shore, edited by Christy Lange (Phaidon), and realized that with all my focus on Uncommon Places, I had overlooked American Surfaces. The paperback version of the latter is available from Amazon.com for less than $30, and spending time with it and the Lange-edited book has had an effect on me: I’m thinking more seriously about format.

In Image Makers, Image Takers, by Anne-Celine Jaeger (Thames & Hudson), William Eggleston says, “I don’t think about what camera I should use that much. I just pick up the one that looks nicest on the day.” That may work for Eggleston, but I think for most photographers the choice of format is more conscious. Alec Soth wrote on his blog that he specifically chose to start working in large format because,

At one point, I looked at the photographers I loved and there happened to be an unusual number who use this format (Nicholas Nixon, Sally Mann, Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld, Roger Mertin, Joel Meyerowitz). Since it worked for all of these people, I figured it was worth a try. And as it turns out, there is something special about the format. Beyond the resolution and tonal purity of the negative, the 300mm lens renders the world in a really unique way. But what I really love is the viewing process. The image on the ground glass is just so beautiful. While the format is pretty impractical, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to give up on the view.

I’ve been told by more than one photographer that I should really change to medium or large format. It reminds me a bit of people telling short-story writers that they should try the novel. There’s the assumption, among some, that you get your start with 35mm and then when you’re serious about photography, you move up. (I know there are photographers like Zoe Strauss—and Eggleston, for that matter—who shoot 35mm, but the overwhelming majority of photographers on my bookshelves and in my link list are not shooting 35; a notable exception: Helen Levitt.)

Looking at American Surfaces, though, I was blown away—not just by the photographs, but by how much I preferred Shore’s early 35mm work to his later large-format photographs. I find his 35mm work more compelling, more intimate. It grabs me in its imperfection.

There’s a place for all these formats, of course, and some photographers successfully move from one format to another, like a writer changing pens. But most photographers seem to stick with one format for years. I don’t think this is just about getting in a routine. And I don’t even think it’s entirely about the end result, the photographs. I think it’s also about the process. Some personalities are just better suited to working with a large-format camera, hauling around all those glass plates and the massive camera and tripod, patiently working to get the image they’re after.

Which comes first: the project or the format? You’d think the project would—that the photographer would conceive of a project and then choose the tool, the camera, that would best execute his vision. But I wonder if it isn’t a little fuzzier than that. Maybe the projects a person is drawn to are the ones that are also best suited to the camera he likes. Maybe the two decisions are nearly inseparable. So someone who’s naturally drawn to a larger format might also naturally be drawn to a project for which large format would work best. And the projects that are most successful are the ones where everything comes together—the right photographer, the right format, the right project—like lines intersecting in some kind of improbable way.

I don’t know the answers to these questions—everything I’m saying could be bunk for all I know. But I do know that, as I’ve gotten some distance from my In Store project, I’ve started to wonder if one of the reasons that the project doesn’t feel right to me is the format. (This is the second key reason I referred to but didn’t elaborate on here.) Nothing is ever that clear-cut. But the lines aren’t intersecting, and I want to figure out why—and learn from it.