Creative paths
By bringing two unlikely subjects together, you can create compelling and rewarding frames of work
Michael Freeman details one of the trickiest but most effective composition techniques of all: juxtaposition
Juxtaposition – setting one thing against another in the frame – is absolutely basic to photography, and has been throughout its history. Quite simply, it adds depth to the image – depth of idea, depth of graphic form. Often just one of these, but sometimes, when we’re lucky or just working harder at it, we can get the two together.
When it’s about idea, the combinations are endless, and it’s all about seeing a connection that other people might miss, but see once you present it to them skilfully. The skill part is crucial, because getting it to work practically is not always easy or straightforward. If you just happen to come across a juxtaposition that triggers a satisfying reaction in your mind’s eye, that’s a stroke of luck and all you need to do is quickly photograph it. If, however, you have an idea that two things might work well together but they’re separated in space, the problem is then to find the magic combination of viewpoint, lens and composition to make it work.
First, however, you must make that creative connection. Why would two things go together and spark some extra idea? In a way, most good photography is about showing connections, with juxtaposition as a special, exaggerated case. It’s essentially a correspondence between two or more things that is unexpected. It works so well for photography because you can’t easily invent the situation without going to a lot of trouble or moving into the studio.
Taken by surprise
The surprise element that a good juxtaposition needs is two things unexpectedly in the same space at the same time. It’s also a proof that you are functioning well as a photographer: alert and creative enough to be open to possibilities. If you were painting or illustrating, there would be no trick to putting two subjects together. The idea of the combination might be good, but there would be nothing special about it visually – it’s just too easy to do. As a photographer, you have to work with what you find, and it’s only occasionally you have the chance to shoot two subjects in order to make a point.
Being tied to reality makes strange and unimaginable juxtapositions all the more powerful and valuable. It really does have to be snatched from real life and be unintentional. Juxtaposition works with subjects as varied as people’s expressions, gestures, actions, and unrelated objects that appear to join in front of the camera’s framing.
It’s totally open to abuse, which is good, because it opens the doors to a whole range of ideas, from silly to thoughtful, and from clarifying the situation to introducing complications. It’s a suggestion that we make by positioning one thing against another and implying that together they equal something else. You can also make graphic forms coincide, and that strengthens the case, but ultimately it’s still all about idea.
Here was an instance where I already had a juxtaposition in mind for the day, but got an extra bonus. These are the classic red telephone boxes introduced in 1935, except that one of them is not what it seems, but an entry in a Londonwide display of ‘Artboxes’ commissioned by British Telecom from different designers and artists. For a shoot on this summer project, I was deliberately looking for locations where I could