Studio Tangents: The Light You Build

What I'm watching this week

In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter — a documentary about the photographer who spent decades shooting through rain-blurred glass, elevator mirrors, steamed windows. He was interested in the light that modified the picture. The film is about how a person decides to spend their attention. I found it by accident and watched it twice in a row.

The documentary record of a practice is evidence that the practice exists: to students, to buyers, to the version of yourself three years from now who will look at the footage and say, I worked that way, I have failed so wonderfully, I was thinking about those things, I made that or Have I made that?

The record is not the work, but work that leaves no trace is harder to believe in and harder for others to believe in.

The problem with documentation is that bad light makes the work look indifferent. A painting I care about, photographed under a flat overhead bulb, looks like a painting no one cared about, and no one will [...]