Black and White and Read All Over

I've been reading, and writing, about characters set against backdrops of texts, and here is a wonderful visual example of that juxtaposition. Photographer Carl Van Vechten often took portraits against geometric backgrounds, which creates a complex formal composition. It seems to set human variety within a grid of some kind.

Here the grid is especially interesting because it too is man made, or written. Yet Van Vechten disrupts our expectations that culture will be predictable and regular by m...