Editing as a creative resource in contemporary photography: reflections on process archives

Abstract

This article reflects on the creative processes in photography, highlighting editing as a creative resource, based on the theories of creation processes with a semiotic foundation by Cecilia de Almeida Salles (2018), whose central methodology is process criticism. The proposal is to extract, from process publications—in this case, a collection of DVDs published by the Instituto Moreira Salles called Contacts (2015)—aspects that contribute to a reflection on photography. The focus is on contemporary processes, particularly editing as a creative resource, with an analysis of archives collected from a publication that brings together various photographers from different contexts of image production and circulation. In this material, the photographers showcase and comment on their creative processes. Therefore, the article presents aspects of the material, seeking recurrences of processual indices to reflect on the role of image editing in the creative process in contemporary photography.