The Photographer's Eye

INTRODUCTION

“…how you build a picture, what a picture consists of, how shapes are related to each other, how spaces are filled, how the whole thing must have a kind of unity.”

PAUL STRAND

Philosophical, lyrical, sometimes obscure commentaries on how photographs are made and what they mean are thick on the ground, usually by non-photographers. Not that there is anything at all wrong with the perceptive outsider's view; indeed, the distance of this kind of objectivity brings new, valuable insights. Roland Barthes even held his non-understanding of photographic processes (“I could not join the troupe of those… who deal with Photography-according-to-the-Photographer”) as an advantage in investigating the subject (“I resolved to start my inquiry ...