SQUARE

People have always been watching TV and films sitting in front of rectangular screens. Books, newspapers and paintings are mostly rectangular. Computer displays are. Windows are. When I was a commercial photographer I primarly shot on rectangular 4x5 inch sheet film and sometimes on rectangular 24x36 mm film. Rectangular frame made me feel at home.
This is why I hated when my customers asked me for 6x6 cm negatives or transparencies. Square frame made me feel lost. When holding my Hasselblad or Rolleiflex I really became clumsy. Getting a well balanced and geometrically organized setting without the comfort of the rectangle turned out to be almost impossible to me.
Until the day I met Flickr, the online photo community whose members can post their rectangular photographs (landscape or portrait) into an invisible square grid. Soon I realized that if I wanted to take advantage of the whole available area inside that grid I'd have to post square photographs. And I did.
I have been editing square photographs for three years now. My last exhibition beared the word "square" as its title, and the one I will make in Venice next year will be exclusively made of square photographs as well.
In short, this discovery of mine (big deal!, you'll say) is the result of a technical feature. The same can be said of my framing approach according to what I'm shooting with: my setting will be different if it's a point-and-shoot or a reflex camera. And my vision will be more effective if the camera doesn't get in the middle.

Comments

[Alberta]

Il trionfo dell'essenzialità. Stupenda Gianni.

(santo cielo, ma che fatica capire come fare a scrivere qualcosa qui! :-D )

[Roberta]

...ma ti pare una lingua comprensibile?
Ci ho messo un'eternità a leggere, altro che nanosecondo! (Sarò lievemente ignorante?)
"In Venice" quando?

[Karl (albireo)]

I love your graphic minimalist style

[Justin Watt]

Gianni, what do you mean by "...whose members can post their rectangular photographs (landscape or portrait) into an invisible square grid."

Are you referring to Flickr's automatic generation of square thumbnails? Or something else?

[Gianni Galassi]

Justin,
what I mean is that the available space in Flickr for the photographs to be posted is 500x500. Therefore users can post, say, a 350x500 (landscape), or a 500x350 (portrait) or a gorgeous 500x500 (square, or 1:1).

[Justin Watt]

Ah ha, you mean the default maximum dimensions for Flickr's image "permalink" pages (expropriating a term from the blogosphere), e.g. http://www.flickr.com/photos/giannigalassi/4179355050/

I thought perhaps you were influenced by this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/giannigalassi/sets/72157622678744509/

Thanks.

[Gianni Galassi]

Well, that too.
Those huge squares made of tiny squares are very stimulating, aren't they?