Street Corner in Butte

Wim Wenders

Street Corner in Buttle, photographed in 2003 in Montana, USA, is of an exceptional painterly sensibility and composition that almost seems uncanny: the slightly tilted lamp post breaks the picture's vertical alignment perfectly, the red fire hydrant creates a central focus point that pulls all other aspects of the image together, the stark contrast that renders the shadows black balances out the use of colour with Mondrian-esque sophistication.

Wenders: "I think that the history of painting really determined my entire sensibility, for photography as well as filmmaking. Vermeer was my biggest hero, then later on it was definitely Hopper. Max Beckmann too. I think they all had a very, very distinctive sense of place and an enormous feeling for composition, and my taste for composition comes from paintings, definitely."

Total Editions: 201