- The photos should be worth seeing.
-
Each photo, with only
rare exceptions, should be presented within its page. The page,
not the spread, is the basic unit.
-
Everyone knows that we
need to see every word in a text, so it's routine to leave margins
around blocks of text on pages. We don't seem able to see that
photos also do best with margins around them. Not run off any
edge of any page. Not folded, spindled, mutilated by being cut
in half by the gutter between pages. Not overlapping each other's
corners or otherwise placed in conflict according to the military
principle called MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). Not disfigured
by pointlessly fuzzy or fancy edges.
-
Show the whole picture.
As in our own printing in the darkroom, do no cropping that
doesn't strengthen the photo. A wondrous example of disrupted
display was in an encyclopedia of photography that shall be
nameless. It's not that they didn't print the whole picture.
They printed two-thirds of it across two pages—through
the gutter—and they put the third third on the other
side of the second third's page. A triumph of inflation mutilation.
-
Photos on facing pages
should reinforce each other visually as well as in context.
-
Picture size. I have
seen many books and magazines in which a good photo is run too
small to be seen and a worthless one is run much larger beside
it. An art director explained: he made the worst pictures bigger
than the best in order "to compensate for their poor quality."
Good thinking! This guy would pick the dumbest sailor in the
greenest crew to be his admiral.
-
The quality of the printing
should do justice to the tonal quality of the print it represents.
This is less a matter of making the picture on the page look
like the original print than of translating it into another
medium in the most appropriate way.
-
Words that appear with
pictures should not be much more foolish than the photos. Nor
should their type faces overpower the photos graphically or
be wildly false to them in feeling.
The list could go on and on, but you get the general
drift: Print photos that deserve respect, and treat them with
respect. These are not rules to obey. They are just sensible things
to do. If you find others that work better, use them.
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The good example
I've received a new book that does almost everything
almost as well as it can be done. Titled CROSSTOWN, it's
a collection of city photographs made over many years by Helen
Levitt. The pictures and the book are done with rare taste, strength,
humor and restraint. The photos aren't new, but the book is. Few
have seen these photographs as well as you can see them here.
Extreme simplicity of means, great care, integrity, intelligent
sensitivity, and wonderful pictures make it exemplary.
The page size is about 9 1/2 x 11 inches, vertical.
The book is clothbound, and a reproduction of one photo (woman
in tailored clothes of many textures leans into window of Checker
Cab; bits of trucks, wedge of pavement; diffuse light) is pasted
on the cloth cover. No dust jacket. The title page says only,
"HELEN LEVITT / CROSSTOWN / Introduction by Fancine Prose
/ powerHouse Books • New York." The price, not given
in the book, is $75, modest for so rich a presentation. The introduction
starts right off with its first sentence, no heading, and fills
five pages with well deserved appreciation of Helen Levitt and
her photographs. It's full of words like "feisty" and
"spirited." They are true. Among the pictures, which
are mainly in black and white, there are no words at all. Many
other photos are in color, which Helen Levitt does not use in
any loud way. It tends to be subdued and harmonious. Most pictures
are from poor New York neighborhoods. The only other words about
pictures are at the end of the book. "The photographs on
pages 11–103 were made between 1938 and 1948. The photographs
on pages 2 and 105–189 were taken after 1959." This
follows: "Crosstown: Photographs by Helen Levitt was
printed in an edition strictly limited to 6000 copies." The
photos beautifully do the rest.
The paper is smooth and thick. The photos are reproduced
with generous but not extravagant margins. Each is printed in
a size judged to be right for it by Helen or by Marvin Hoshino,
the book's uncommonly good designer. I think they must have worked
together closely. Mostly it's one picture to a page, two to a
spread. Each picture page has its picture or pictures and a page
number—nothing else. Some photos face black pages; others
are sensitively paired and reflect well on each other. Its is
a quiet book but not a dull one. The street as a theater where
interesting people of all kinds play themselves is the theme.
The drama is varied and constant. That's what Helen Levitt very
consistently does. I think she's either very brave or too absorbed
in what she sees and photographs to be afraid or self-conscious.
The people play themselves superbly, and she's there to record
it all. This is moving stuff. There is a gentleness and subtlety
to the photos, but there's strong stuff, too. Funny, sweet pictures,
sure, but tough ones, too. I'm much taken by the one on page 19.
Two women, a man and a boy, in front of a decrepit wall, all have
a look of anxious severity, and the way they stand together gives
it intensity. In the picture that faces them, two women exchange
confidences and other people pass, one close, others across the
street, reflected in the glass of a door. It's a well-matched
pair.
Crosstown is printed in tritones, and with
the four-color printing, it is actually printed in seven colors.
The printing is rich and generally excellent. I counted, perhaps
correctly, 175 pictures. They add up to a considerable experience.
These pictures have emotion and depth. The more I see them, the
more I find and feel in them. It's enjoyable and enriching. It's
what a photo book can be.
