Many photographers and filmmakers create unusual and striking compositions to emphasise aspects of their chosen subject matter. You might like to consider the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Alexander Rodchenko and the film work of John Ford. Investigate appropriate examples and develop your own work based on this theme.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) is one of the most original,
accomplished, influential, and beloved figures in the history of
photography. His inventive work of the early 1930s helped define the
creative potential of modern photography, and his uncanny ability to
capture life on the run made his work synonymous with “the decisive
moment”—the title of his first major book. After World War II (most of
which he spent as a prisoner of war) and his first museum show (at MoMA
in 1947), he joined Robert Capa and others in founding the Magnum photo
agency, which enabled photojournalists to reach a broad audience through
magazines such as Life while retaining control over their work.
In the decade following the war, Cartier-Bresson produced major bodies
of photographic reportage on India and Indonesia at the time of
independence, China during the revolution, the Soviet Union after
Stalin’s death, the United States during the postwar boom, and Europe as
its old cultures confronted modern realities. For more than twenty-five
years, he was the keenest observer of the global theater of human
affairs—and one of the great portraitists of the twentieth century. |
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Alexander Rodchenko
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John Ford
Ford’s incredibly unflagging talents and rare ability to harness the complex studio apparatus to make genuine works of art eventually drew the attention of critics, historians and critics-turned-filmmakers Lindsay Anderson and Peter Bogdanovich. Ford was, in fact, among the very first Hollywood directors to be recognized as an auteur whose films shared a vivid personal signature and concern for certain dominant themes. Intermingled with Ford’s concern for the myths of history - or perhaps, one could say, the history of myths - is his deep and abiding love of the West as the cradle of American civilization and as a potent quintessence of the American psyche. Ford’s cinema offers one of the most important and sustained mediations on the West in American popular culture. |
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Composition presentation
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