SQUARE

Image

Children, Cartagena, 1973

A square format was never seen in the visual arts as a natural frame, and was used just occasionally, often to make a point about rigor and severity. The equal sides give a sense of strictness, formality, even constraint. Photography was different, because for decades there was medium-format 6x6cm film, and this pushed photographers into finding square compositions. They found that square could be good—on occasions when you want to divide things equally, to center things, when you have a uniform field or a symmetrical subject, and when, as here, you want to enclose another shape. Because the square frame has no ...

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