Frida Kahlo's 'Disrupted Symmetry'

 Between 1925 and 1954 Frida Kahlo painted 55 self-portraits. In most of these she confronts the viewer in a full-frontal, straight-on manner. This helps her bring you into her world. She wants you to feel her pain, and her passion.

'The Broken column' painted in 1944

Much of her pain was physical. Her health problems began when she contracted Polio at age 6. At age 18 a bus she was riding in was struck by a streetcar and she was impaled by a handrail and her pelvis, spine and leg received multiple fractures. It was during this bedridden recovery period when she began painting seriously. But she never did really recover. In her lifetime she would have 35 surgeries and would wear 50 different supportive corsets and a prosthetic leg.

'Self-Portrait with Monkeys' painted in 1943

Her damaged body did nothing to suppress the power that emanates from the inner self here. We are left to wonder what her understanding of 'self' really was and how she was able to so directly communicate something so intangible. 

Composition was one of her tools. Her figure is slightly off center in these, eyes toward the viewer, with head slightly turned away. 

This type of composition is simple to emulate with electronic media, especially with a camera on a tripod, responding to a central pose, or a centered element, with a slight de-centering. This may evoke disruption, or it may make the image more dynamic.