The earliest work in this exhibition, this photograph illustrates Saunders’ focus on symmetry and repetition, with the stairs between the apartments mimicking the angle of the telephone wires in the top right-hand corner of the frame.
Though tightly controlled, the composition of his photographs was never the result of art direction or interference, but of a strong sense of balance when approaching a picture. “Arranging them or directing them would do violence to a situation which should only be interpreted truthfully,” he once said. “To change it would change the truth.”