The True Photographic History of ‘The Rule of Thirds’ (and Golden Mean)

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A look back on the history of photography to uncover the truth about the origins of the famous 'rule of thirds' idea for composition.

Jerry Uelsmann, “Self-Portrait as Robinson & Rejlander” © 1964 Uelsmann Estate; from the Rubin Collection.

For the pictorialists, one didn’t just push the button; it usually took additional work to transform a snap into “art-photography.” To accomplish this they employed a variety of techniques: softening sharpness, using special papers and emulsions, hand-coloring prints, and combining negatives to create montages. They often chose subjects that were allegorical or mythological and meticulously posed elements and settings to create more formal compositions.

From 1869 to 1942, in every case, this compositional tip was the same: that a subject can be stronger when moved out of the center and toward the edge — what I’d call the actual rule. But because modernism was the dominant approach to photography, this guideline was minor and difficult to find in any publications or textbooks.While most photographic discourse and education were about modernist approaches, there were still some holdouts.

I hope we will never see the day when photo shops sell little schema grills to clamp onto our viewfinders; and the Golden Rule will never be found etched on our ground glass.Cartier-Bresson was making a directed dig at Haile’s approach as he made the poetic allusion that the only application of the Golden Rule is through the photographer’s eyes. He was not only referring to Haile, but any formal schema, any geometrical organization of the elements in a photo.

Carleton Wallace, as well as being a crime novelist, penned dozens of self-help books across a range of popular topics. Wallace released at least ten books on photography. In that we first see an important modification of this originally useful “rule of thirds” tip.

The modular Nikon F pioneered the SLR camera; it included a number of important features that made it practical and easy; and importantly, for focusing, it offered a split-image rangefinder in the center of the frame — the focusing spot. had this amalgam of facts and misinformation to spread, and is typical of the mythology that persists today:

 

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