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September/October 1999

A photographer’s choice of film format—the size and shape of the film his or her camera uses—is a highly personal one, and feelings regarding the various shapes available often are strongly held. The square format, often criticized as being either excessively static or just plain clumsy, is the “odd man out” compared with other popular formats. Nevertheless, the square has been used with great success by many great photographers, and has served an important role for many others. Personally, it’s a picture shape I’ve used with great satisfaction for years.

Throughout the history of most of the world’s cultures, the square shape has been uncommon in visual art. In my work as a museum photographer, I spend a lot of time in art museum galleries, and, regardless of culture or historic period, the absence of square pictures is a consistent characteristic. Among western cultures, Asian cultures, cultures of the Americas and Africa, the rectangular picture shape is vastly more popular than the square. Over the centuries, even the circle has been used by artists more than the square.

In the early part of the 20th century, though, painters began to use the square canvas, often for abstract images, to the extent that square pictures are not uncommon in galleries of modern painting. In any case, the use of the square format in visual art seems to be a twentieth century phenomenon.

For practical purposes, the history of the square format in photography begins in 1929 with the introduction of the first Rolleiflex. If square format cameras were popular previous to this, I’m not aware of them. The Rollei’s designers, Francke and Heidecke, had been producing various rectangular format cameras since about 1920, and it’s my assumption that their decision to make the Rollei a square format camera rather than a rectangular one was based on considerations specific to the twin lens reflex configuration, rather than aesthetics. If the new twin lens camera were designed to make 6x9 negatives, for example, it would have been undesirably tall. Perhaps more important, the elegant waist level viewing system of the Rollei would have been miserable to use sideways when a horizontal picture was desired. All this leads me to conclude that the square format of the Rollei was a concession to the waist level viewing of the twin lens reflex camera design, rather than a consciously desired film format. Though I can’t find any reason to suggest that Franke and Heidecke were particularly enamored of the square picture for its visual potential, photographers since then have certainly found the Rollei’s native picture shape useful and expressive.

Composition
As I look at the compositional nuts and bolts of square photographs, I find myself dividing the images into two broad categories. The first group consists of images in which the entire square format is filled with picture. In these, making the picture rectangular would inevitably trim off important visual elements. These are pictures that would clearly suffer if cropped to a rectangular format.

The second group is made up of images that could, at least in theory, survive being cropped to a rectangular shape. These are pictures in which the information contained at the sides or top and bottom of the image don’t tell us much we don’t already know. Many of Richard Avedon’s square portraits are an example of this latter aesthetic, where additional white space at the sides of the subject is included in the final print, serving a purpose more artistic than utilitarian.

It is perhaps, this inclusion of “extra” image at the sides, top, or bottom that is the most unique characteristic of square format photography. In using the square format, we often include more of a subject’s surroundings than we would with a rectangular format. I believe that, once a photographer accepts this condition, a subject’s “surroundings” can acquire a new visual importance.

Landscape
Landscape art has traditionally used the horizontal format due to the fact that the horizon is the most consistent design element in such a picture. To make landscape pictures in a square format, one must accept that a lot of foreground information will be included in the view. This runs contrary to traditional landscape photography styles, exemplified by Ansel Adams photographing from the platform atop his International Travelall in order to see past the distracting elements in the immediate foreground. With a square camera, the photographer must accept the presence of such distractions, and make them part of the message.

I’ve come to enjoy photographing landscape with the square camera, and prefer my square efforts to my more traditional horizontal rectangles. The square pictures are just like the horizontal ones except they include either more foreground or more sky. My eye is generally pleased with either contribution. When I frame my picture to give extra image space to the foreground, I appreciate the fact that these closest picture elements are rendered in great detail, unlike the more distant elements. An almost democratic effect takes place wherein humble foreground elements achieve visual parity with the landscape’s more majestic components. When cloud formations in the sky are particularly strong, I will frame my picture to include more of them. I spend a lot of time just looking at clouds, and am always grateful when I can include them in an otherwise earthbound image.

Portraiture
The square shape had gained its greatest acceptance, perhaps, In the area of photographic portraiture. Around the middle of the 20th century, gifted photographers such as Richard Avedon, Robert Doisneau, and Irving Penn used the Rolleiflex camera in their portraiture and editorial work—choosing the Rollei, I presume, for its obvious merits of modest size, quick operation, and high image quality. Diane Arbus made her incredible portraits with a Mamiya TLR. In all cases the resulting negatives were square. To varying degrees, these photographers and others like them began to reject the common procedure of cropping their pictures down to 8 x 10 proportions. I’m guessing that they liked the way their pictures looked in the viewfinder and on their contact sheets, and didn’t want to chop off the edges in order to neatly fill a standard sheet of enlarging paper. A square portrait is, in itself, a break from tradition, and it seems to me that the way the subject floats within the square frame can evoke a feeling of isolation, as in the work of Arbus and Avedon.

Issues of visual psychology aside, I really like the square format when photographing people. I can choose to find a way to fill the entire square with my subject, or let the environment we’re working in fill out the frame. This can be a visually active background, or just a plain white wall in the studio.

The first time I can remember taking the square format seriously was a weekend several years ago, when I borrowed a friend’s Rolleicord. This was at a time when a Leica M2 with 35mm Summicron was the only camera I used for personal work.

I was intrigued by this primitive little TLR, and shot a few rolls of film over that weekend. What surprised me was how so many of those square negatives found their way into my enlarger. Regardless of subject matter, my eye liked viewing the world through this square window. The image quality of this format pleased and surprised me as well. Though the Rolleicord I was using had a relatively crude three-element lens, I loved the smooth manner in which it rendered images.

Still, I couldn’t sell myself upon the relatively slow and deliberate process of using the TLR, and I continued using 35mm for a few more years. I was running out of patience with the gritty 35mm image quality, however, which suited my increasingly formal images less and less well. Finally, I dived into the medium format world, acquiring first a Plaubel Makina 67 and, when it was pilfered, a Fuji GW 690. These cameras offered me the juicy image quality of medium format and, in the case of the Fuji 6x9, an aspect ratio I was thoroughly familiar with from my Leica days.

Though I worked happily with these rectangular MF cameras for a good while, the idea of someday using a 6x6 TLR stayed with me. I got my chance the day I got a phone call from a friend who had seen an old Rollei for sale at a swap meet for $150. I couldn’t say no. I became a square.

From the beginning, it has come naturally to fit my subject matter into the square frame. When I’m out and about with a camera, squarish scenes and subjects seem to abound, and my use of the square format feels unforced. Of course, I’m actively looking for square pictures and, if I were using my Fuji 690, I bet I’d be finding more long, skinny pictures.

Decisions…
Not all subjects or scenes cooperatively fill out the square, of course. When a landscape just doesn’t work in the square format, I must accept that there’s no picture there for me, and move on. With more immediate subject matter (especially people), though, including additional “context” at the sides is often a blessing.

Though including extra environment may make it more difficult to separate a subject from its surroundings, the same quality fits well with the way I see the world. Often, it would seem, the setting is as important to me as the subject. Since square pictures are, at once, vertical and horizontal, the photographer doesn’t need to make a decision regarding camera orientation. I work best when I’m working simply. The reasons the fixed-lens Rollei has remained my most productive camera is that it relieves me of making two decisions most photographers must make: which lens to use, and which way to turn the camera.

Practical advantages
For the photographer who, for various reasons, has no choice but to crop his images to fit 8x10 paper, square format negatives offer some advantages that might not be readily evident.

For one, you only have to learn to hold a square format camera in one orientation. There’s no need to turn the camera on its side, ever. A single exposure with a square camera offers equal potential for both vertical and horizontal results. Subsequently, pivot- ing flash brackets, which reposition the flash to a position directly over the lens when a camera is changed from horizontal to vertical, are unnecessary.

Another ploy available to the square format photographer is the ability to imitate a view camera movement in certain circumstances. I do this all the time when I photograph horizontal interior views of museum galleries using a Hasselblad SWC. I make sure the camera back is precisely vertical and frame my picture carefully with regard to its left and right limits. I don’t pay a lot of attention to the amount of ceiling and floor in my frame, because I know I’ll attend to that in the darkroom. When printing the negative, I just move the easel up and down in the projected square image (not unlike using rise and fall on a view camera back) until I’m satisfied with the framing. The lack of converging verticals combined with the exquisite SWC image quality gives a view-camera-like result.

Camera choices
Though medium format cameras deserve their reputation for being expensive, it’s certainly possible to get into square format photography on a budget. At the low end, the Russian-made Lubitel TLR costs less than $50 new, and there have been a couple of square format Chinese cameras available very reasonably. At a much higher level of quality, thousands of used Rollei and Mamiya TLRs are still available, though the market value for used Rolleis continues to escalate.

Though the square format began life in the TLR configuration, high quality SLRs have been available for decades, offering interchangeable lenses and film magazines, prisms, metering systems, and countless other opportunities for credit card abuse.

The camera type that unfortunately has been largely ignored by square format camera designers is the noble rangefinder configuration. The Mamiya 6 is the shining example of a modern square format RF, and, as you might guess, it’s a big favorite of mine these days.

Conclusion
Ultimately, our choice of film format doesn’t have to be restricting. You can easily make square prints from rectangular negatives and vice versa, but I believe that most serious photographers make a commitment to the image as perceived at the instant of exposure, and find it unproductive to try to “improve” a picture by reshaping it in the darkroom. Good photographers trust their eyes above all else, and what one individual finds visually satisfying may not work at all for another. It’s not my intention to convert others to square cameras but, rather, to explain why I am so content viewing the world through a square window. I really appreciate medium format image quality and own way too many MF cameras, but the two square cameras I own are the only ones getting the most use. Six-by-six will never be known as the ideal format,but—for me— it may be the ultimate one.

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