Re: Alex Webb

[Kari Eloranta <kve@dopey.hut.fi>]

> From: George Huczek <ghuczek@sk.sympatico.ca>

> The compositional framing is also something which characterizes his work,
> particularly with a horizontally-framed image split right in the middle
> with a vertical post of some sort.  This goes against all of the rules of
> "proper" photo composition.  Try it sometime ... and see if you can pull it
> off.
>    What he seems to be able to do with these split frames, is create
> dramatic tension in the image by placement of two seemingly dissimilar
> things in each half of the frame, resulting in a visual irony of
> juxtaposition.

That split is indeed hard thing to pull off. Salgado uses occasionally a
somewhat similar techinque by imposing a cross on the entire image.
Typically a window frame or a some odd construction structure of that
shape. This may actually be a bit easier since his images often have a
timeless, "biblical" (given his ideology he might actually object to
this term...) feel and this shape symbolically matches it in the viewers
head. But aside from that it usually puts the same unbearable tension
into the image that is hard to do right.

snip
> rangefinder camera.  You just know it.  The subjects are so unaware
of the
> photographer's presence.  He can be working in a crowded market and be
> virtually ignored ... this simply would not happen if the camera had the
> characteristic pentaprism-shape above the lens.  

I suspect there are a bunch of hip shots among those, too. Preventing
the vibration and keeping it stealthy in shooting like that is just 
so much harder to do with SLR. 


Kari