Turning the Mundane into the Magical with a Click
But not the click of a keyboard
It wouldn’t be a lie to say that I went into the Photobook editing project feeling uncertain. We, two editors now instead of one, had to communicate and ideally collaborate with a photographer remotely. We had to understand their project (their Major project), potentially even help shape it, and then ensure it was publication ready in only a few weeks.
The initial roadblock was one that I’d encountered numerous times in my other writing and editing classes. Updesh, our photographer, had a completely different process in her photography compared to how I go about writing. When I begin a writing task, I decide on a ‘core.’ Whether that’s a point I want to make, a question I want to ask, or an idea I want to dive into deeply, in almost all instances I have an idea of where I want the project to go, even if it ends up changing, I start with that idea.
It felt to me that Updesh was simply going by intuition. To her mind, she had taken beautiful black and white images of a pilot, they were the first step and the project or the structure or the interview or the captioning could just form itself around them.
This shouldn’t have surprised me at all, when I take photos myself there is not meticulous planning or expectation. The medium of photography is about capturing and framing something external, not conjuring it or crafting it from scratch.
The medium of photography is about capturing and framing something external, not conjuring it or crafting it from scratch.
Nevertheless, I found myself worried by the ‘book’ in photobook.
I expressed this early, my inner non-fic writer trying to find a through-line, a story, or point to Riley and his plane and I worried immensely that my subpar editing would result in the construction of a subpar book around him.
What was the angle? Did he have a dramatic past that led to his decision to become a pilot? Could we construe this in some sorts of sports-movie-esque nothing to Something? Or was this a Jarhead sort of thing? Did pilots have to undergo some sort of crazily demanding and dehumanising training? Or maybe COVID was the thing — I mean of course it was, right? Topical? What use is a pilot when we can’t even go anywhere? Maybe the whole thing is about connection, yes that’s the spin.
I dumped myself into a deep structural edit. The interview she’d done with him wouldn’t stand alone as it was, it needed more. In our correspondence I suggested some follow-up questions to send him, and prayed for some sort of drama to work with in the answers.
In the meantime, I cut the words from the pdf she sent me and pasted them into a word document to pour over. I wrote 600 words in developmental notes and the same amount in comments, my response to her work was effectively longer than the work itself.
My anxiety was compounded when a communication error between me and the other editor effectively delayed our response to Updesh for almost a week. With a new draft of copy to edit and not enough time for a realstructural edit, the words I’d written were wasted.
With a new draft of copy to edit and not enough time for a real structural edit, the words I’d written were wasted.
I felt defeated, resigned to the feeling that we’d somehow failed her as editors, that if anyone happened to look past her images they’d discover a poorly edited set of captions.
After my co-editor Aimee had passed over the latest draft, now locked in as a pdf with the images, late on a Saturday night, I had a look. I realised I’d been entirely wrong.
I realised I’d been entirely wrong.
The images didn’t need a story. There was an immediacy and a sort of intimacy to them that was compelling in and of itself. On the page the text was an afterthought, something that I couldn’t imagine bothering with in my first reading of the photobook. My chest unclenched, my concept of the work as a sort of children’s picture book where text and image had similar weightings had been completely off.
The text was, mostly, like a sort of clarification. Not quite a caption on all fronts, but definitely not a real story, enough of that was in the images. What’s more, there were adjustments, small, but there, that I could see that would help.
Aimee’s proofreading had caught most of the errors and polished the text, but with a day left on the clock I finally felt like I’d found some work I could, and should, be doing.
The day before the due date I met Updesh in person and we went through the work, page by page.
The work I did was small, and often resulted in making the text smaller. Tucking it in, straightening its edges, folding it away in spots. There were some moments I felt that confident that it could flourish a little, and I let it.
But for the most part I felt comforted by the fact that the images on the page were doing more than enough.
After the familiar roadblocks it was only fitting that I learn a familiar lesson, the text doesn’t always need to be immaculate, glowing. Sometimes it can be small and quiet and effective in the way that it does as little as possible, and stays out of the way of the reading.
