Breaking the rules
Throw the rule book out the window
For other examples:
Lee Friedlander p. 71
Daido Moriyama p. 79
Robert Capa p. 105
Robert Frank p. 121
Everything about this image by Bill Brandt is so wrong.
First, our eyes are pulled out of the image by the path on the right. Then there’s that off-kilter lamppost, awkwardly making contact with the very top of the frame. And look how the subject – the painter Francis Bacon – is positioned to the extreme left, his gaze brutally cut short by the edge of the frame. Add a horizon line that cuts right through the subject’s head and you’ve got an altogether uncomfortable composition, riddled with tension and anxiety.
Tension and anxiety. Actually, that sounds a lot like Bacon’s paintings. On second ...
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