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Critique By:
Elizabeth MVW (K:25)
1/4/2007 8:27:43 PM
Boom. Frozen clouds. A body poised betwixt buildings. The body mass is being held in place by impossible bookends. Falling in on her. She is aligned with the sky, unattached to the ground, unlike these grounded monuments of greed. Only the railing keeps her from dominating the composition. It holds her back, gently laying her dark form down upon the battlefield of the background, where a silent war rages between these dark edifices. A balance of power.
The enormous difference in hue between the sky and the architecture makes the clouds seem wonderfully distant, if we assume the clouds to be the background. Yet as our eyes wander about inside the image, our mind does battle over what is closer - a conflict that is constantly resolving - as it must remind itself repeatedly that the architecture is the primary graphic mass, not the vivid sky. This figure-ground conflict, brought about by heightened contrast, adds shades of complexity to an otherwise basic composition.
Powerful vertical lines demand contextual resolution through horizontal lines, and here the railing provides it. But it is slightly tilted up to the right, creating the subtle tension that underlies the theme. Without it, the image becomes conservative and ordered, as if it was a computer rendering of reality.
The conflict-resolving detail of the buildings in the top half of the composition contrasts nicely with the shadowy purpose-of-concept in the bottom half. The marriage of the two halves is a little off-center, though. This skews the balance away from the idea of the individual and into the idea of the threatening skyscrapers. Then, attacking the leaning threats by leveling the railing seems useful. But that only further defeats the individual by removing both the conceptual focus and the tension derived from the tilt of the all-important railing.
The slant of the whole image is not the problem; in fact, the buildings' respective tilts are appropriately proportioned to their apparent heights. However, the magnetism of the frame is balanced precisely at the included corner of the building on the left. To maximize the distribution of power in the composition (a.k.a. balance), that corner should be at the vertical center, but it is slightly below it. Also, the horizontal thickness of these two infinite bookends should be identical at that point. Yet, at that point, the building on the left is marginally thicker.
Cropping can solve these problems. The left side and the top side can be clipped, placing the corner at the vertical center and evening up the primary graphic masses at that point. Simple enough. But every bit of the building detail is essential for the healthy survival of the figure-ground illusion. So, a much better solution would be to add some blackness (or the original cropped image data, if it still exists) just below the frame and to the right of it. In that way, the problems with the corner and with the graphic masses becomes resolved, the amount of the building detail remains intact, and there's the added benefit of allowing the model's legs to not seem awkwardly truncated.
Such a stark image comments on the place of humans inside a world formed by their own ambitions of immortality. Things seem so much larger when trying to chart a course through them. The model here has found a balanced spot to rest her own overshadowed ambitions. But she cannot stay there long, for the looming buildings and the movement implied by their angles and the railing brings a smothering tension rocketing to the surface. She must be ready to move.
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