Falling in love with editing

On the production of The Raw Society D I S Connected Volume II

Curiosity is a powerful driving force and mine feeds an insatiable impulse to learn. Since joining The Raw Society a year ago I have had the chance not only to meet an incredible crowd of enthusiast and professional photographers, but to work side by side The Raw founders Jorge Delgado Ureña and Christelle Enquist, thanks to whom I have deepen my love for the craft. I have benefited from their generosity in sharing their time and knowledge, and their discipline and rigor in bringing together photography and storytelling.

The Raw Society has built in its DNA an emphasis in community. A community of diverse, polyphonic, multidisciplinary group of people coming together around the idea and practice of photography as a powerful vehicle in the creation of meaning. But also a community of collaboration, where ideas can be floated, gather momentum and traction, and manifest in unexpected ways. An example of the latter is the production of a yearly Member photo book with photographies produced within the community, edited and sequenced by a volunteer. Ben Rook, a friend and fellow member, editor of volume I, was my first source of inspiration. He wrote a short piece in his Substack The Making of D I S Connected explaining his own editing process. When the time for thinking around the second volume was ripe I didn´t hesitate and volunteered. A crazy impulse as I had never edited a photo book, nor thought about sequencing and less so about creating a cohesive narrative with a series of images. Nonetheless, my drive for learning took the best part of me.

The journey started by defining, together with The Raw Society´s core team, a set of possible themes for the volume and having them voted by all members. Ideas of Home in its widest possible sense were chosen to serve as anchor to a visual narrative using 133 photographs submitted by 45 members. I took each image as an independent block of meaning, a sort of potential phrase in waiting to become something bigger than its self. How to connect this puzzle and create a story with cadence, rhythm, a beginning and end, using the visual grammar? Perhaps a combination of intuition and my Buddhist training led me to start by just letting the ocean of images sink in: I revisited them for a couple of days, not in a particular order, not with a particular intention except allowing them to make an imprint in myself. This silent, none conceptual observation, eventually led to clarity on an initial structure of meaning from which to work. Several iterations followed under the mentoring of Christelle Enquist, and a more fluid structure emerged intertwining texts - poetry and short quotes, with images, producing a cadence and rhythm to the story. Sequencing the images was a joy, a discovery of a hidden language that allowed each independent visual block of meaning to a wider dialogue with itself, the images that came before and after, and the whole. But more than that, the sequencing and editing felt like a silent dialogue between me and the diverse and polyphonic expressions of all the members that trusted their photos to my process of creating a meaningful whole. I fell in love with the process. The end product, beautifully packaged by the graphic design of Matias Harina, a fellow Raw member, is a great testimony to the community of collaboration that The Raw Society is.

D I S Connected Volume II is a visual story that invites the viewer not only to a deeper reflection on what is home, but perhaps to an expanded understanding of intimacy and care, two feelings that are unequivocally connected to home.

Preview and purchase the zine version

Preview and purchase the photo book version

As I reflect back on this first journey in editing the words of Jose Manuel Navia, a formidable Spanish photographer and thinker keep resonating in my mind: a photographer is someone who has something to tell through a visual narrative in which editing and sequencing are as important as the act of capturing images. What a great invitation to continue this journey!