I mentioned in a recent book review that I have subscribed to photographic community in which my two favourite photographers (Valda Bailey and Doug Chinnery) mentor us, the subscribers, in creative ways to use the camera (a lot of multiple exposure and Intentional Camera Movement). The community splits into two sections: the first concentrates on process and technique and the second, far more interesting to me, focuses on “finding your creative voice”.
As part of this second half, we read some books together. And Molly Bang’s “Picture This” is the first of these books.
There’s something of the ring of genius in this book. It is written in very simple language. I almost think I could read it to my 2-year-old granddaughter and she would understand most of the words. But it communicates brilliantly. So brilliantly that I have immediately recommended the book to all the members of my local camera club of which I am the chair.
Molly Bang takes the story of Little Red Riding Hood (she becomes a Little Red Triangle here) and gradually explores how the size, shape, colour, position etc. of an object in a picture affects our emotional response to that picture. Then she expands on this by illustrating a whole series of principles, starting with the way gravity, which we live with every day of course, affects how we look at pictures (it’s why we think a level horizon is stable and calming and why we think tall trees are less stable and more dynamic, for example).
It’s a short book, made shorter by the fact that alternate pages are a picture illustrating what the facing page talks about. But I would heartily (or h-art-ily) recommend it to anyone who is interested in art.