Composition: the act of combining parts or elements to form a whole.
Gestalt: a pattern with specific properties that cannot be derived from the summation of its component parts. I've written before about "the other", and I wanted to link this concept to photographic composition. As you can see above, I've added some definitions that I found online that I think need a little explaining. Composition is pretty straightforward, mostly about bringing things together. Photographically, we speak of composing elements in a scene to create an image. Gestalt is a little more obscure. The word comes from a German word for shape or form, but was also used to describe a type of psychology that got mistranslated enough times to make it difficult to define properly. The way I am using the word is based on bringing things together, so it seems appropriate. There is also a phrase associated with gestalt that is often mistranslated as "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". A better translation would be "the whole is other than the sum of its parts". Greater implies something better, and that is not always true. Other also implies something else has happened when things are brought together, and this is how I tend to use the word. It ties in well with the concept of "the other". So what does all this have to do with photographers composing images? Glad you asked. Whenever we compose, we are looking for patterns in the things we see. We search for something that unifies a scene in a way that pleases the eye or makes a statement. But how is something unified? Is it something we impose on a scene that is related to human perception? If so, is it not really there? Is the rule of thirds a myth or the use of leading lines something viewed only by the human observer? Or could there be something more, something other than the flowing river, the green landscape, the textured rocks? I believe the answer is a little of both. There is something imposed by human perception, while at the same time there is something other than what the individual parts of a scene seem to suggest. We as humans impose our views all the time. When I say we impose our views, I'm speaking photographically. We all have ways of seeing the world and tend to create images that support that view. I'm not big into mountains and hills and other large bumps in the landscape, but I love green foliage and flowing water. I also like human constructs, especially the old and ruined kind. So what do you see in my images? Not mountains, but towering skyscrapers and dilapidated structures. Not desert, but verdant trees and river rapids. You may see the hustle and bustle of the city, the interaction of people celebrating their lives, the complex studio set up of a product or model. These are the elements we compose with because this is what we are predisposed to see. I remember when I was young we moved to a two story house that had a single window looking out towards a big snow topped mountain in the distance. I would stand on a stool and look out that window for what seemed like hours, just enchanted by the view. I could see nothing else. My parents, on the other hand, were worried that their little son was looking out a bathroom window. When I pointed out the mountain (remember it was really big!), they were shocked that they hadn't noticed it before (you know... the mountain... that was really big). Their perception, their composition of that view, did not include the distant mountain (the really big one), however big it happened to be (did I mention it was big?). They saw the backyard, the street, and the electrical wires above, but no mountain. As a young boy, I had lived in a very flat land before moving to this house, and a mountain was something new and fresh and wondrous to experience. I was ready for something new, and that mountain was it. I was predisposed to view the other, while my parents saw what they expected to see. The way we view the world determines how we arrange its elements. We look at a scene; we impose what we think the scene should look like; we never really see. By removing distracting elements to concentrate on what we expect to see, we focus our attention on what we want to look at. How many times have you photographed your family while traveling, only to realize later they are so tiny in the image they're barely recognizable. You distinctly remember them being prominent in that image, so what happened? You looked at what was important to you, not at what was there, and it affected your composition. Instead of combining the disparate parts of the image so they related to each other, you lost them in the blend. When we compose, we need to arrange the parts of the scene in such a way as to create a sense of structure. Each part, although remaining a separate entity, must also connect with all the other parts to create a unified whole. The image must transcend its bits and pieces and become something other than what we are looking at. This is the other we want to see and experience — that elusive something that isn't easily defined nor readily categorized and placed into a nice simple box. This is the difference between a driver's license picture and Steve McCurry's "Afghan Girl" or Edward Weston's "Pepper No. 30" and an add in a grocery store. The other is what sets images apart — the photographs we keep coming back to time and again. Art critics write extensively on these images, vainly trying to explain the unexplainable -- the passion, the flow, the gestalt of a work. They try to show there is something greater in the artwork when what they really experience is the other. I have never found an image that is truly greater than reality, but have found many images that are other than reality, that move me and make me feel a connection. When we photograph, we engage ourselves in the moment, we concentrate on bringing out the other in our work, and in so doing, stop taking photographs and start making them.
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