Space is always an active part of a design. It has a visual effect whether it is filled with images or it is empty.

As you compose a picture or design you will usually have one element as the Focal Point. This will become the foreground and the space around it becomes the background. This relationship is flexible, the visual weight of foreground and background can vary.

This design has balanced foreground and background. Your eye can flip-flop between recognizing the white shapes or the black shapes as the foreground. The white space, which you usually assume to be background has been given extra importance by giving it equal area and adding little "eye" shapes.

This arrangement of the figures creates a very powerful and interesting negative space.

The contents of the negative space suggest a "twilight"... an atmospheric space effect.