Heres my thoughts. I think great photographs communicate ideas and great artists all use visual language to achieve that. Learning how to use this language frees you from rules. A great photographer once told me in grat photographs either everything in the frame is helping the visual statement or if it not helping the statement then its hurting it. Nothing should just be there.
To many new photographer think in terms of one great image. One great image no more makes a great photographer or a great body of work as would one great at bat make a hall-of-famer. All the greats work in bodies of work.
I think another big mistake new photographers make is trying to create images that give immediate gratification. Heres a great quote by Ralph Gibson.
"A good photograph, like a good painting, speaks with a loud voice and demands time and attention if it is to be fully perceived. An art lover is perfectly willing to hang a painting on a wall for years on end, but ask him to study a single photograph for ten unbroken minutes and he’ll think it’s a waste of time. Staying power is difficult to build into a photograph. Mostly, it takes content. A good photograph can penetrate the subconscious – but only if it is allowed to speak for however much time it needs to get there." - Ralph Gibson
Using the tools like line, implied line, shape, color, repeating shapes, etc are all things that need to help support the statement which would include composition and any one of those elements are all of those elements in great photographers are all helping the visual statement.
Bresson was so good at it. A great quote by him.
"You are asking me what makes a good picture. For me, it is the harmony between subject and form that leads each one of those elements to its maximum of expression and vigor." - Henri Cartier-Bresson
I would say emotion can be enforced by using some of these elements or in some cases all of these elements by using them to enforce what you, the photographer is trying to say.
Also think about what you are saying with your photographs. Are you merely shooting the noun or are you saying something more? are you telling us what that object means to you. Are you showing it to us in a way that you see it instead of the way it actually is? Anyone can shoot it as a noun but how and what does the subject actually mean or what it might actually be; the verb.
Building these element into the work along with seeing and working in terms of bodies of work also help develop a personal way of seeing and a style. All the great artist have a style. I think the best compliment that a photographer can get is that photograph looks like a photograph that that photographer made. Heres a few quotes by a few of the greats about seeing you in your work.
"You should be able to look at me and see my work. You should be able to look at my work and see me." - Roy DeCarava
"The decision as to when to photograph, the actual click of the shutter, is partly controlled from the outside, by the flow of life, but it also comes from the mind and the heart of the artist. The photograph is his vision of the world and expresses, however subtly, his values and convictions." - Paul Strand
"This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock." - Edward Weston
I say worry more about getting yourself into your images and less about emotion. Emotion is subjective and as Winogrand and the OP brought up what might have you emotional might not have any effect on someone else so instead build your photographs on something solid and work on getting you into tyour work Thats what will make it truly special and unique because if it looks like everyone elses work then its not special its what everything elses looks like.
