When I look through our photographs from Mongolia, the eagle hunters belong to a larger story than any one image can tell. They are part of a journey that also included an unsuccessful search for a snow leopard. The photographs we brought home and the animal we never saw occupy the same place in my memory.
A finished photograph gives that journey a clear edge. Here is a person, an eagle, a particular moment. Memory is less orderly. Looking at one picture can bring me back to other parts of the trip, including things that never became photographs at all.
That difference interests me more as I spend time with our work. What I remember when I look at a photograph is not necessarily what someone else will see.
What else belongs to the journey
Mongolia brought us into the world of Kazakh eagle hunters. Those photographs belong to the same journey as the unsuccessful search, yet they tell a very different story.
Looking through them reminds me how narrowly a trip can be described by saying whether we found a particular animal. The snow leopard mattered to us. So did the people we photographed.
When we arrange our work into collections, we give each subject its own space. Someone interested in wildlife can follow those photographs; someone drawn to the eagle hunters can spend time with their portraits. Those divisions help people find their way through the work. They do not describe how I remember being there.
In memory, the subjects are less neatly divided. They belong to a place we visited and a period of our lives spent there. A photograph helps me return to one part of that experience. It cannot bring back the whole journey.
“The photographs bring back what we saw. I also remember what we hoped to find.”
Katrin Weiss
What the viewer cannot see
When someone looks at a finished print, they encounter the moment inside its edges. They do not have access to everything the photographer remembers. They have the photograph, its title, and whatever we choose to tell them about it.
They may be drawn to a face or a gesture. They may notice a detail I have stopped noticing because I know the picture so well. Their experience of the photograph will be different from mine. I like that there is room for both.
A personal attachment can make it difficult to judge a photograph. Knowing what a trip meant to us does not automatically make every image from it compelling. When we decide what to share, we have to consider what is actually visible in the picture. Does it hold our attention on its own? Have we given the subject enough room, or included something that distracts from it?
My memories explain why a photograph matters to me. The photograph still has to give someone else a reason to look.
The accompanying words can add something useful: who we photographed, where we were, or why we were there. I want those words to be honest about what we know. A portrait records an encounter. It does not mean we can speak for the person in it or explain an entire way of life.
Coming home without everything
Our photographs from Mongolia do not include a snow leopard. That remains unfinished for us.
Yet I would not want the missing photograph to become the only way I describe the trip. We did photograph people and places worth remembering, and I want to give those pictures the attention they deserve.
There is a practical difference between looking back through a collection and looking forward to a journey. Before we leave, there are photographs we hope to make. Afterward, we have to look carefully at what we actually brought home. The pictures may lead us toward a different account of the place than the one we expected to tell.
For me, the eagle hunter photographs deserve to be seen for their own subjects. They are not consolation for an animal we missed. The people in them were part of our time in Mongolia, and those encounters have their own place in our work.
When I look back, I remember the search alongside the photographs. I know what is missing from the collection, and I know there was more to the journey than what we hoped to find. The eagle hunters are there in the pictures. The search for the snow leopard is there in my memory.