Working the scene

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”
    -     Elliott Erwitt

The first edition was regarded as groundbreaking

I was captivated with the book, "Magnum Contact Sheets" (Lubben, Kirsten, published 2011 and 2014) although nowadays when most of us start off learning photography,  we are working in digital which means that we can dispense with the practice of using contact sheets.   We can of course easily create and print off a sheet of contacts from our digital images but they are seen as a different entity and Lubben refers to them as "a transaction of what a photographer has seen, rather than its trace".  The aim in publishing the book, therefore, was to acknowledge that this way of working was becoming obsolete but also show how the photographers within the famous Magnum collective agency capture their shots and undergo the editing and selection process for the final image.  The book contains the work of only one photographer who edits digitally but works with colour film.  Michael Subotzky, whose work "Beaufort West" series, Western Cape, South Africa, is included in the publication, stated that "Editing digital work on the computer was like going straight to a work print for each frame".

The book was produced to illustrate the process the photographer worked through when shooting the frames, then using the contacts as a tool for editing and finally having an index to an archive of negatives.  In the book Lubben states that contact sheets were "often compare to an artist's sketchbook" and indeed in the 1960s and 1970s when photography education became prevalent, contact sheets were studied and used as an item of instruction for photography learners.  Photography enthusiasts became interested in the process of taking the photograph rather than just the final perfected image and an example of this was in 2003

Contact sheets for the famous "Boy with the Toy Hand Grenade", taken by Arbus in Central Park, NY.

when the Diane Arbus: Revelations exhibition in San Fransisco's Museum of Modern Art included freestanding displays of her personal memorabilia, including contact sheets. 

Eric Kim, the contemporary street photographer has published an e-book, entitled "Street Photography Contact Sheets" because he felt it was important to share the process of shooting street photography with the reader.  He refers to the Magnum Contact Sheets as the most useful and educational photography book that had ever been printed.  He also cites the reference being made in the book that the illustrious and possibly the most famous photographer of all, Henri Cartier-Bresson destroyed his contact sheets and was not disposed to sharing his "detritus" with others.  

We are directed to examine the idea of Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment"  and realise that by looking at Breton's contact sheets, that it took more than one frame for him to capture that one single decisive moment image. 

Cartier-Bresson's famous photo symbolising the Spanish Civil War 1936

Cartier-Bresson's contact sheets as they appear in the book

Through looking at the contact sheets we can trace how Cartier-Bresson "worked the scene" as referred to by Eric Kim, and it gives us an insight into the process of his work.

So for learner photographers, like myself I think we have much to learn from these photography masters by gaining access to the contact sheets and getting a "behind the scenes" glimpse into their way of working.

Magnum contact sheets showing how Bruce Gilden "works the scene.

"I love the people I photograph, I mean, they're my friends.  I've never met most of them or I don't know them at all, yet through my images, I live with them" - Bruce Gilden.