Woman Waiting to Take a Photograph
by Dave Eggers
The woman is a young woman. She wants to make a living as a photographer, but at the moment she is temping at a company that publishes books about wetlands preservation. On her days off she takes pictures, and today she is sitting in her car, across the street from a small grocery store called “The Go-Getters Market.” The store is located in a very poor neighborhood of her city—the windows are barred and at night a roll-down steel door covers the storefront. The woman thus finds the name “Go-Getters” an interesting one, because it is clear that the customers of the market are anything but go-getters. They are drunkards and prostitutes and transients, and the young photographer thinks that if she can get the right picture of some of these people entering the store, she will make a picture that would be considered trenchant, or even poignant—either way the product of a sharp and observant eye. So she sits in her Toyota Camry, which her parents gave her because it was two years old and they wanted something new, and she waits for the right poor person to enter or leave the store. She has her window closed, but will open it when the right person appears, and then shoot that person under the sign that says “Go-Getters.” This, for the viewer of her photograph when it is displayed—first in a gallery, then in the hallway of a collector’s home, and later in a museum when she has her retrospective—will prove that she, the photographer, has a good eye for irony and hypocrisy, for the inequities and injustices of life, its perfect and unmitigated absurdity.
Just a little something I reread yesterday in The Education of a Photographer.
In an attempt to be witty she is being unintentionally cruel. And fails to see she is the subject she is looking for, hiding away in her car, waiting, waiting, waiting….
Here is my 2cents: I take this story as one essentially about being a self-aware photographer. Photographers need to see with their hearts as well as their minds.
For example, the photographer here sees her composition in just an intellectual way, especially in the contrast between the people and the store sign. But at the same time, she is being blind (or acting blind) to the privilege she has compared to her “subjects.”
Why does she not think they are go-getters? Does she believe that poor people (the drunks, transients, and prostitutes) just need to work harder to change their circumstances? What about the opportunities in life (or lack of them) they had? What about the opportunities in life she had? Americans (speaking as one) love to think that hard work can overcome any obstacle, and then judge those that didn’t have the privileges they had by saying, “they just need to work harder.” Class and Work becomes moral issues when they aren’t. Life often presents some serious challenges that sometimes cannot be overcome with all the hard work in the world.
So yes, for me, it’s a cautionary tale. If you’re using other people’s personal tragedy as a way to “express” yourself or to make an intellectual point, then aren’t you exploiting them in someway? And if you have ethical values that say all people (no matter their circumstances) are entitled to dignity, then isn’t exploiting people wrong?
As a photographer, I think the challenge is recognize all these types of things–to see with our eye, mind, AND heart–as much as possible. The point is not so much about the particular photo you take, but more about the spirit and the concept you put into them and how you try to be a decent person in the process.
Is there any difference, artistically speaking, if the young woman wants to make the photograph described in the text because she thinks it would be fun/interesting/effective/moving, or because she wants to make a photograph that she thinks someone *else* will find fun/interesting/effective/moving?
I can honestly say that the sort of thing that she is doing is the kind of thing I have done, but I think I can honestly say that it has never occurred to me, unless I was being paid to take a photograph by somebody else, to take one or not to take one because of what *somebody else* would think of it.
Well, okay to be honest from time to time I take a picture of something because I think my wife or a friend or somebody will like it, but that is always because of the subject matter (e.g. it’s a particularly pretty flower of a type I know my wife likes.) But by and large, if I am setting up, framing, considering, composing, putting real mental effort into making a photograph, it’s either because I’m getting paid (alas, all too seldom) or because I want the photograph for myself.
In any event, I am not saying that this makes me a “better” or “purer” artist. (I do not care for contextual appraisal of artworks, which is why things like Pollack’s blob-paintings irritate me so.) But the converse of that frame of mind is that to me, it does *not* make any difference whether the image the young woman is going to take was made because she needed/wanted to express herself, or because she thought that this particular situation would produce a photograph that would impress a professor/critic/gallery owner. (Although of course it’s a cynical old world where it’s *all* the latter.)
I am interested to know if you think it does, or what others think about it. I read the quoted paragraph as being a little cautionary: it seems to me that the author is saying that the subject is sliding down some kind of slope where she defines her work in terms of who will like it, who it will impress, and whether it contains the proper elements to be “real art,” or at least social relevance. I agree that this can have negative results but – and this could just be me being oversensitive – I do not care for what I sense as the slight hint of condemnation. It’s one thing to say, “Don’t get so caught up in what other people think that you lose your vision,” it’s another to say, “If you are just doing it to be a Photographer, as opposed to making photographs, you’re doing it wrong.”
Hi ! just a quick question : I am a photo student in San Francisco and have been reading this book . I am wondering if someone out there could give me a run down on the difference between “taking” vs. “making” pictures ….. I can understand waiting around for the ideal moment and including/excluding certain elements or subjects from the frame, but in the end aren’t you still just “taking” the picture ?