Josef Sudek

The camera is now as common placed as the pen. It is no longer a privileged object. It is a tool that anyone can use to document or to express. It is a tool of personal interpretation that is guided by the choice of format. Clear distinctions in a photographer’s visual style can be seen depending on whether they use a large or smaller format camera. The diversity of styles proves the medium is not limited to one method or ideology; however, it is limited by format. The complex relationship with the arts depends on the interpretation of the viewer, whether it is art or photography. An individual presents a photo

that is interpreted by another individual. The format plays a decisive role in the visual cues that the person looking at the photo picks up. The camera and lenses used by a photographer help to define their own unique style. The choice of the camera will lead to constraints and freedoms depending on the equipment chosen; and more importantly, affect the actual visual style and interpretation. A photographer usually experiments with most formats until they find one that is comfortable to what they want to achieve. Once this decision is made, usually later in their life, they remain with that format in the attempt to master it. The format can achieve, in a handheld camera, Bresson’s ‘decisive moment’ of a man jumping a puddle; or in a large box camera, the detailed glass plate studies of a garden through a frosted window by Sudek.

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