Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
I don’t think very much about [composition] consciously, but I’m very aware of it unconsciously, instinctively. Deliberately discard it every once in a while not to be artistic. Composition is a schoolteacher’s word. Any artist composes. I prefer to compose originally, naturally rather than self-consciously. Form and composition both are terribly important.
I find a howling error in composition, because something is in the wrong place, and I leave it there. God arranged that; I wouldn’t touch it.
Edward Weston
[Photographer, b. 1886, Highland Park, Illinois, d. 1958, Wildcat Hill, California.]
Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk.
Errol Morris
[Documentary filmmaker, b. 1948, Hewlett, New York, lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
Quite often photographs gain power from what is omitted from the frame rather than from what is included.
Jacques-Henri Lartigue
[Photographer, b. 1894, Courbevoie, France, d. 1986, Nice, France.]
The golden rule is “work fast.” As for framing, composition, focus—this is no time to start asking yourself questions: you just have to trust your intuition and the sharpness of your reflexes.
Ingrid Sischy
[Editor and writer, b. 1952, Johannesburg, South Africa, d. 2015, New York.]
[Sebastião] Salgado is far too busy with the compositional aspects of his pictures—with finding the “grace” and “beauty” in the twisted forms of his anguished subjects…. This is photography that runs on a kind of emotional blackmail fuelled by a dramatics of art direction.
Pedro Meyer
[Photographer, b. 1935, Madrid, Spain, lives in Mexico City.]
The photograph as an objective representation of reality simply does not exist. The photograph does not explain to you what is going on to the left or to the right or above or below the frame. Oftentimes, it doesn’t even explain to you what is going on inside the frame.
Edward Weston
[Photographer, b. 1886, Highland Park, Illinois, d. 1958, Wildcat Hill, California.]
When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial clichés.
