Why I Delete My Own Photographs

Just a few days ago in Bucharest, I was having a conversation with a few photographers about something I do quite often: removing photographs from my portfolio.

Photographs that I once liked, photographs that maybe worked well at the time, but that today simply don’t stay with me anymore. I look at them and I don’t feel the same connection. They no longer represent where I am as a photographer.

And I think this is something we don’t talk about enough. We always talk about making new photographs, adding new work, building a bigger portfolio. But sometimes growing as a photographer also means knowing what to leave behind.

From Berlin

One example is this photograph I made in Berlin. I still like the execution. At the time, I wanted to create a square frame, and when I made it, I really liked the result.

But I think that feeling belonged to that moment.

Two years have passed, and I’ve become more mature about what I want to explore with my photography and what kind of images I want to keep in my work. Looking at this photograph today, I simply don’t feel the same way about it.

There are thousands of photographs made in that exact place. Many of them are beautiful, well executed, with good composition. And there is nothing wrong with that.

But for me, that is no longer enough.

It’s a good photograph. It just doesn’t represent me anymore.

Milano

The second image is beautiful. It has something of that classic Cartier-Bresson feeling, and I still appreciate it.

But after some time, I look at photographs like this and ask myself a very simple question: Would I want to put this image on the wall in an exhibition? Does it really represent me, or am I keeping it just because it is a nice photograph?

For me, the answer is no. So I don’t keep it.

Not because it is a bad photograph. But because I could probably make a similar image tomorrow. It is not one of those moments that happened once and will never happen again.

I do this exercise regularly. I try to detach myself from my own photographs, even from the ones I like. I want to become better at letting them go and keeping only the images that I believe will still have something to say years from now.

P.S.-I learned this way of selecting photographs when I was still a beginner. I learned it from the American photographer John Free.

He told me something that stayed with me: you are your own judge. In the end, you decide which photographs stay and which ones you let go.

He also made me understand something else. If you go back five or six years into your archive and you still love everything you made, if you are still proud of every single photograph, maybe you haven’t changed enough. But if you go back and start removing images because you see them differently now, it means your vision has changed. You are growing.

I still use this idea today.

And this is also something I try to teach in my classes: be selective with your own work. Don’t keep a photograph just because it is beautiful, technically good, or because other people like it. Learn to ask yourself if it really represents you and if you believe it will still speak for you years from now.

The more selective you become, the stronger your work becomes over time.

From Marsseile

This is the kind of photograph I know I will keep forever, because it represents something much closer to what I’m looking for in photography.

There is action, there are layers, there is storytelling. Different things are happening inside the same frame, but they come together and create one moment.

For me, this is the difference. It’s not just about making a beautiful composition. I’m looking for photographs that have life inside them, photographs that tell me something and that I know I won’t be able to recreate tomorrow.

These are the images I want to keep. And these are the moments I’m always looking for when I’m out photographing.