FYI ~ composition / surface - on seeing
Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 10:08AM 
While in Montreal, I visited Galerie Pangée were I was introduced to the work of Benoit Aquin - specifically, a few of his color photographs of le dust bowl chinois. About a dozen or so of his prints were in a portfolio box that was sitting on the gallery countertop and I took it upon myself to open it and have a look.
The prints were small - 11×14-ish images printed on 13×19-ish matte paper - and they were not for sale. The gallery had previously displayed his exhibition size prints - 30×40 / 40×60. I'm sorry that I missed that. Now I'm on the gallery's mailing list so I'll be notified of upcoming exhibits.
In any event, I was able to purchase his book, Benoit Aquin ~ FAR EAST, FAR WEST. In the book's Introduction by Olivier Asselin the subject of how Aquin conveys in print what he sees arises and, IMO, much of what is offered up applies to my picture making MO:
Aquin's photographs also possess extraordinary beauty, all while resisting conventional aesthetic forms. Their composition is discrete yet exceedingly subtle. Far from the formal simplicity usually associated with beauty, these images neither favor or avoid the centre, nor can they be reduced to a sweeping line or compositional form (horizontal or diagonal, rectangular, triangular, or circular), nor to an opposition of distant planes. Sometimes the composition is classic: the subject is centered, the sky and landscape well proportioned, the point of view frontal, with the lines of the motif echoing those of the frame, or they are precisely oblique, opening out to two vantage points. But more often than not, the composition seems arbitrary, with the subjects, including people, being cut by the frame
Key words/phrases: resisting conventional aesthetic forms, discrete yet exceedingly subtle, the composition seems arbitrary. IMO, these notions describe my approach to composition. But, there is another important element to composition - that of keen awareness of the 2D surface of the print...
.... in Aquin's work, there is a veritable fascination for surfaces. His work often integrates wide or flat motifs, which partially or complete obscure the view, bringing to the fore the flatness of the the image, in the form of a wall, a window in which another view is reflected, a curtain of plastic strips in a shop doorway, a car windshield, a tarpaulin delimiting an urban construction site, large signs covered in letters, an open newspaper, the roof of a tent, a line of men, a row of trees, etc. Alternatively, the motif is presented in such a way that it appears flat: the cracked earth, a bed of stones, a tiled floor, or an asphalt road, which, viewed from above, fills most of the frame, reducing the photographic space to the surface of the image ... the surface is also affirmed by the multiplication of motifs, by their homogenous repition, or, quite opposite, by a heterogenous accumulation of varied motifs ... these motifs, these colours and varied textures fill the images, animating it with constant visual movement, as in an all over composition, or a carpet
I have always considered one of my most favored qualities in the pictures that I find to be good / interesting is that of animation with constant visual movement - what I have always called visual energy. And, ever since my first use (40 years ago) of a view camera and its 2D focusing/viewing screen, I have been acutely aware of the corresponding 2D qualities of the surface of a photographic print.
I will admit to never having thought of my compositional MO as that of a carpet (now I will) but I have been very aware of the all over form of composition that is to be found in most of my pictures. And, by the nature of my very nature, I have been forever given to "resisting conventional aesthetic forms".
Now, if anyone wants specific info regarding any of my pictures, please name a specific picture and I'll do my best to "dissect" it.
gravitas et nugalis
Featured Comment: John Linn wrote/asked: Your crop of Benoit Aquin's photo is very nice, but do you feel it is right to modify someone else's art? Or is this how the photo was used on the cover of the book?
my response: The picture of the book cover is un-cropped - that's exactly how it is presented on the cover.
Reader Comments (2)
Your crop of Benoit Aquin's photo is very nice, but do you feel it is right to modify someone else's art? Or is this how the photo was used on the cover of the book?
I enjoy your photos and essays.
John
Thanks for the link to Benoit Aquin's website. Besides the thought provoking images of the Chinese Dust Bowl (re. the art of seeing) I was transfixed by his "Nemagon" series. Despite of maybe too many variations of this topic already published, I found his coars and unpretentious images highly disconcerting.