Why Bresson told Inge Morath to view her subject upside-down

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Kupepe

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Hello,



In an article in Magnum about Inge Morath one can read:



"Now Cartier-Bresson taught her to see composition by looking at photographs upside-down, a standard teaching method for photographers and painters. He gave her a Vidom viewfinder, which allowed the photographer to view her subject not only upside-down but also reversed right-to-left."


Saul Leiter did the same thing when checking his prints ...



Why did they follow this practice?
 
I was told this as well in school, and as I recall, its a method to abstract the image from what you know to be true (people, places, and things) and to better evaluate them more as shapes, lines, and overall composition.



Then again, I may be somewhat wrong, as I had heard that years and years ago.
 
Exactly. For years, I evaluated my slides by looking at them (or projecting them) backwards. Seeing them backwards detaches me from what I already had an attachment to and lets me seem them as if for the first time. Did the composition work? Let's look at the slide backwards and see for sure...
 
When I was a kid in the 1960's, my mom, a commercial artist used to have me hold my paintings up to a mirror and view them, again, to see how the composition held up.

Hadn't thought about that in years. Thanks.

Best,
-Tim
 
One gets used to the mistakes in a painting. If you look however at the painting through a mirror, it is as if you are looking at it with someone else's eyes. The "errors" become more clear, so you can correct them.

By looking at the work both normally and through a mirror the work becomes more balanced.

It is a trick every painter knows. Cartier-Bresson was trained as a painter in the studio of André Lothe.

The Vidom viewfinder gives an image as in a mirror. Cartier-Bresson always used a Vidom-finder when he worked with the Leica IA (from 1932). The camera itself has a viewfinder too, but Cartier-Bresson complained that through that thing he could see nothing.


Erik.
 
Kupepe said:
Hello,



In an article in Magnum about Inge Morath one can read:



"Now Cartier-Bresson taught her to see composition by looking at photographs upside-down, a standard teaching method for photographers and painters. He gave her a Vidom viewfinder, which allowed the photographer to view her subject not only upside-down but also reversed right-to-left."
Click to expand...

I seem to remember Marc Riboud saying he received the same advice from Cartier-Bresson.

John
 
I thought it was common knowledge, I heard or read it somewhere long ago. Try it, it works! Or rather, makes things easier. Keep in mind however that some compositional elements do depend on direction, to name a few diagonals, where human subjects face and dark/bright top/bottom - these need to be evaluated in the right orientation
 
Looking at this photo through a mirror will not help much.

Leica M2, Summicron 50mm f/2 rigid, 400-2TMY.

Erik.

45434805221_98b837fca3_c.jpg
 
Kupepe said:
Hello,



In an article in Magnum about Inge Morath one can read:



"Now Cartier-Bresson taught her to see composition by looking at photographs upside-down, a standard teaching method for photographers and painters. He gave her a Vidom viewfinder, which allowed the photographer to view her subject not only upside-down but also reversed right-to-left."


Saul Leiter did the same thing when checking his prints ...



Why did they follow this practice?
Click to expand...

As your quote says it is a standard technique for artists. The human eye and brain naturally views a subject and interprets it say as a specific person which prevents it from looking at the "negative spaces" of the image (i.e. the area around the person in the image). Which is what you want to think about when considering composition.

Viewing an image upside down seems to allow the brain to see the composition better without trying to interpret the main subject which distracts it.

I think though you can eventually learn to see an image's composition more intuitively without this with practice. For example, I am pretty happy with the following street composition but do not even recall taking the photo. But I think my composition (though not perfect- note one persons foot partially cut off ) which would have happened instinctively while I was in the field, is pretty much of the sort I would have chosen had I had more time to think about it and compose carefully.

Street Talk by Life in Shadows, on Flickr
 
Everybody's brain is wired differently. For me, this did nothing. Besides, how is it going to help you with composing a shot through a camera's viewfinder anyhow? Are you supposed to turn the camera upside down before tripping the shutter? I just tried that. For some strange reason it looks exactly the same 🙂

What one would normally do (and this applies to anything already printed, drawn or painted) is hold the piece up in front of a mirror to ck it's composition. But that really was also no help to me because what looks great one way may look terribly out of balance the other way. The only way I was able to make lino cuts and etchings look right to me was to do the initial sketch as a positive to get the composition right, then flip it over to trace onto the block or plate.

I've been painting, printing, drawing and photographing for a long, long time, and with everyone I have met during all this time it has become clear that you either see the correct composition as you are working, or you don't. I suspect that no amount of tricks can help you if you have no innate sense of composition.

In any event, nearly all of the rules of composition that painters know apply to photographs as well. Like, wherever you have a human face, any human viewing the photo is going to look at that first. If you are trying to make something recede into the background's horizon on a colour photograph, put a touch of blue there. The most important thing to understand is how to use negative space, and the Asians were masters of this. If you're making a portrait of just one person it makes zero difference where you put them in the space, the viewer's eye is going to go to their face first, but you can make them feel things emotionally by properly using negative space. It's very easy to make the viewer feel tension or calmness by placement of the person in the photograph if you know how to do that. You can use also colour to generate emotion, or you can use it to change a composition.

And if you really know what you're doing you can break every compositional rule ever made and still have a great shot.
 
TennesseJones said:
Fascinating.
Did he modify these Vidom finders to allow this view?
Were they set up this way originally and if so why?
Click to expand...

No, the Vidom-finders were made this way, as were the earlier torpedo-finders.

The later Viooh had a double-reflecting system so it had no mirror effect anymore. But they were bigger.

The mirror-effect responses in a strange way to the right/left perception of humans. When you look through a mirrored viewing system for a long time, you are getting used to it as if that is the normal way of seeing things. This must have been the case with Cartier-Bresson in his early years.

Erik.
 
I am a view camera photographer and I am used to viewing subjects backwards and upside down. It is an invaluable way to view compositions, and it works. I think it leads to more thoughtful and powerful photographs. Abstraction is an aid to composition.

Again this all gets thrown out the window if you are photographing something non-repeatable involving action. But it does affect your eye and brain and how you work with static subjects.
 
Some of my favorite photos I've ever taken have been with a TLR with the reversed image in the viewfinder. Never considered how much of a difference it makes but it truly makes you work harder and be more careful to get a good composition.
 
Another useful trick I have found in this vein: I find it easier to judge the composition the smaller the image. While I enjoy viewing my images full screen, I am unable to judge them for problems in composition unless I use a viewer/editor that lets me shrink them to a much smaller image than the view window. (Many image applications have minimum image sizes that are still a bit too large.) Lacking that, walking across the room helps too.
 
olifaunt said:
Another useful trick I have found in this vein: I find it easier to judge the composition the smaller the image. While I enjoy viewing my images full screen, I am unable to judge them for problems in composition unless I use a viewer/editor that lets me shrink them to a much smaller image than the view window. (Many image applications have minimum image sizes that are still a bit too large.) Lacking that, walking across the room helps too.
Click to expand...


Indeed, I've also found composing harder with very large viewfinders. But they're nice for focusing (in SLRs, and for longer lenses in RFs)...
That's really another thing that non-eye-level-viewfinders have going for them, one can back off so the image appears smaller.
 
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