{"id":8208,"date":"2026-10-09T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/?p=8208"},"modified":"2026-10-05T14:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T12:07:11","slug":"tradita-and-retenta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/2026\/10\/09\/tradita-and-retenta\/","title":{"rendered":"Tradita and Retenta"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last week I said I hate the word work<\/em> and then proceeded to use it and explain it with a private definition: work is what you\u2019ve shared, everything else is practice<\/em>. I feel that I need to clarify that post. I had planned to revisit it at some point because I wrote it a long time ago, but I think it needs to be sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comments that followed were correct. For example, Brooke pointed out that the dictionary disagrees with me, and that \u201cwork in progress\u201d and \u201cfinished work\u201d already cover most of what I was reaching for. Someone even wondered if he should delete most of his practice so only the real work remains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comments made me think that although the idea might have been ok, the vocabulary was getting in its way or sharing it. So I\u2019m replacing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Tradita<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

As I said in the original post, I don\u2019t like these words anyway. But I didn\u2019t explained why clearly. One reason is that work<\/em> has a second meaning that has nothing to do with art or craft: it\u2019s what you do for money. Work means a job, a contract, a client, an invoice. \u201cI\u2019m at work,\u201d \u201clooking for work,\u201d \u201cpaid work\u201d, \u201cout of work\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When that word is used to describe art or craft, the meaning gets blurred and a whole lot of baggage comes with it. When I say \u201cmy work\u201d, some people hear \u201cmy business\u201d, and others hear \u201cthe thing I do for a living\u201d. Others understand that I\u2019m talking about the things you produce as you practice your craft, with or without the idea of making money out of it one day. I don\u2019t photograph for a living, and I don\u2019t want my photography to be assimilated to that meaning because I\u2019m not writing a newsletter about how to make money. The reverse also doesn\u2019t work for me: if I ever did get paid for a photograph (you never now), I wouldn\u2019t want the payment to be what dictated whether it had value in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not excluding money from the photographic process. A photograph can be commissioned, sold or licensed, and I may do some of that someday if I decided to go that way (though after weddings nearly twenty years ago, it\u2019s not something that I\u2019ve considered). It just isn\u2019t part of the definition of what I do when I go out to take photos. Remuneration is something that can happen to a photograph, like being printed or framed. It doesn\u2019t change the nature of the photograph. A word that mixes the two somehow implies that a photo is more valuable or real if it is involved in a monetary transaction. I don\u2019t (want to) believe that, even though in our ever increasingly materialistic and transactional world, I\u2019m starting to feel like this is a minority opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here are the two words I\u2019m planning to use instead following a change in viewpoint: a photograph I\u2019ve handed over to someone else is a tradit<\/em> (plural tradita<\/em>), from the Latin tradere<\/em>, to hand over. One I\u2019ve kept to myself is a retent<\/em> (plural retenta<\/em>), from retinere<\/em>, to hold back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like that neither word really comes with any baggage. \u201cPractice\u201d implied rehearsal, as if the unseen photos were warm-ups for the real thing which would be the real thing. In some cases it is the case, but in a lot of the time photographs are not shared because you don\u2019t want to. A retent can be a finished print in a book on my shelf that nobody has ever looked at (I print my photos in themed books but nobody ever sees them; the closest I get is when I share zines<\/a>). A photo I don\u2019t share isn\u2019t a less valuable photo, it\u2019s just one that hasn\u2019t left me. That addresses the idea of \u201cfinished work\u201d being what you share: it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also tradit<\/em> is money agnostic. It only implies handing over to someone, nothing more. A tradit can be a free postcard<\/a>, a paid commission, or a sold print. Even a photo I have been commissioned to create for an ad campaign but haven\u2019t delivered yet is still a retent, no matter how much the client has already paid for it. The only consideration is whether someone else has received it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So no, you shouldn\u2019t delete your retenta<\/a>. Most of what you make will be retenta, and that\u2019s how the craft works. It doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not finished. It doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not valuable in itself. Sharing your photos doesn\u2019t make them more real or more part of your legacy. Look at Vivian Maier: she has a huge legacy that is considered as one of the most important street photography productions, she just never knew it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of Maier, last week I said work is what you show<\/em>. That wasn\u2019t right, because Vivian Maier never (or extremely rarely) showed anyone anything, and her photographs have since been seen all over the world. The release into the world happened without her. A better definition is about the receiving end only: a photograph becomes a tradit when someone other than its maker has experienced it as a finished thing. In the case of Maier, it happened after her death and her tradita still expand to this day as more photos are processed and released.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That means that the concept of \u201cfinished\u201d as in \u201cfinished work\u201d no longer applies. It implied too much permanency anyway. I said that a shared photo can\u2019t be revised, which is technically wrong because I didn\u2019t go into the details: I can open the file tomorrow and change it. What I can\u2019t do is change the copy in your head. So put more accurately, reprocessing a tradit doesn\u2019t revise it, doesn\u2019t change it. By definition. It is a consequence of memory and attention, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reprocessing a tradit makes a new retent, a second object. The first one stays out in the world, exactly as people received it, unreachable, unchangeable forever. The two objects can have the same value, as in what they look like, but a different identity. If I later share the new file, I\u2019ll have two tradita of the same original, and both are real, both are received. The important idea is that handing something over is a versioning event, but not a change of any existing tradit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most people, their archive will be vastly retenta. These photos live on hard drives, in private albums, in boxes, or in photobooks only the printing machine ever saw. Very few are tradita. Like Ansel Adams said, \u201cTwelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop\u201d. It\u2019s normal and it shouldn\u2019t be a reason to delete your retenta. Take Robert Frank: he took 28,000 photos for his book The Americans, and selected only 83. That\u2019s an absolutely tiny tradita to retenta ratio. There is no telling how many weren\u2019t published he but still considered finished and would have liked to add to the book. These remained part of his retenta. I remember when I did weddings, I would take thousands of photos on the day, present about 300 to the couple, and select with them just enough to create the album, even though the excluded ones were still good and finished in my opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s what counts at the end of the day: how many photographs do you consider finished, even if nobody will ever see them? Your retenta has as much value as your tradita. Maybe not financially. But qualitatively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I may be wrong about these invented words too. If you\u2019ve got a better pair, I\u2019d like to hear it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#Photography #Opinion #IMayBeWring #Tradit #Retent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I said I hate the word work and then proceeded to use it and explain it with a private definition: work is what you\u2019ve shared, everything else is practice. I feel that I need to clarify that post. I had planned to revisit it at some point because I wrote it a long […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion","category-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8208"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8212,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8208\/revisions\/8212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photoni.st\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}