The Issues of John Szarkowski: Framing

For critique on Monday April 8th, please shoot a roll of film and print four 8x10" images that deal with the concepts of framing. Review John Szarkowski's selections of images and the ones below to help you understand the issues. Make sure your four images deal with at least four of the sub-categories found within framing: Content, Juxtaposition, Fragment, Frame within a Frame, and Meaning.

"The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge -- the line that separates in from out -- and on the shapes that are created by it."


"The photograph's edge defines content." 

Joseph Koudelka

What you choose to include and exclude from the picture defines the subject of your image and how it is communicated to the viewer.

"It isolates unexpected juxtapositions. By surrounding two facts, it creates a relationship."

Manual Alvarez Bravo 

Through your choice of framing the photographer can create juxtapositions and comparisons between various objects or subjects. This is a powerful device that forces the viewer to create meaning or experience an emotional tension based on the juxtapositions created in the photograph. 

      Roy De Carava 

"The edge of the photograph dissects familiar forms, and shows their unfamiliar fragment."

           Minor White

Subjects are transformed through tight framing. Framing allows you to select only a small fraction of the scene, or selecting the scene in such a way that it becomes something completely other then itself. Through this device new formal patterns can be created through the use of the negative and positive shapes, texture and tone. 

Arron Siskind 

  "It creates the shapes that surround objects."

Helen Levitt   

Within the frame of your image subjects can also be framed with existing shapes - windows, mirrors, doorways, organic shapes, any two lines, etc. Creating a frame within a frame establishes a kind of resonance between the physical and the photographed frames. This device also serves to isolate the subject from the rest of the picture, which in turn can create layers of meaning and possibilities for interpretation.

    Henri Cartier-Bresson 

"The photographer edits the meanings and patterns of the world through an imaginary frame. This frame is the beginning of his picture's geometry."


Robert Frank