Nakazakicho Street Diptych

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I think this is a pretty effective presentation but then I am a fan of diptychs where many people are not, often stating that they find them pointless and thereby missing the point to begin with.

 

I would be tempted to add text space on the left to create a folded card or self promotional mailer to send out to clients. I would have had less space between the two images and made the border a little smaller also. Maybe there is a formula behind the proportions you used but I'm not quite seeing it though the more I look it seems to have something to do with the proportions of the buildings along the meeting edges of the frames. It would probably work better the way you have done it if it were to be a folded piece. I am just finding it (slightly) distracting but not to worry, the next person to post will completely disagree with me I'm sure.

 

The asymmetric treatment is interesting in that the image on the right seems to have more gravity (mass) and is attracting or pulling objects from the left image. Everything appears to be pulling towards the right side which adds an interesting tension to the composition. I don't know if the cells or atoms that make up this world are trying to split or combine.

 

A rather thought-provoking presentation.

Thanks for the comments. Starting with the picture as a whole, I really didn't know what to do with it since it seemed very unbalanced, the left side, full of detail and activity; the right, more stately and measured in its makeup. I took my inspiration from Manga or comic books - not so much of the current variety since I don't really read them, but those from the golden age of action/adventure/horror comics I read as a kid and which sometimes used a whole page to break an action scene into separate component panels. It had the effect of allowing you to zero in on a particular part of the action or, by switching your field of focus, to view the scene as a whole. From such ancient memories and references come today's approaches. Anyway, I thought I'd try it and see how it works.

There's absolutely nothing I could add to Dennis' review. I like it and it works. Enough said.

Movie adaptations of comic books (sorry, graphic novels) are all the rage lately. Comic books and story boards are a good analogy for this type of image. For me diptychs can be thought of as sort of a mini movie or animation. In other words a longer slice of action than can be captured in one frame. I recently picked up an Action Sampler camera at the thrift store. It has four little lenses that fire in rapid succession creating four images on a single frame of 35 mm film. It sort of gives you an Andy Warhol perspective on the world as each image is slightly different than the next. I added colored gels to the four little flash heads which will hopefully enhance that effect. I'm still working on the maiden roll of film.

I guess my favorite part of this image is that it is worthy of thought and discussion. That's what art is all about. Thanks.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3505/3314718316_b614736459_m.jpg

Yeah, got to keep trying new things otherwise grass starts to grow between our toes and for old codgers like us, grass between the toes makes us look like statues of garden gnomes.