Henri Cartier-Bresson, again

rutt

It seems there is really no escaping him, at least for me, and that's a good thing.

I gave a presentation about him in BD's documentary photography class last spring and some recent posts have made me remember that BD and I don't exactly agree about what was his best work and some other details. I pulled together the pictures and notes I used for this presentation into a journal gallery. I'd have posted these inline, but it's a dgrin convention not to do so with copyrighted work. Note that these are very poor reproductions. It's well worth your while to buy a book of his if you haven't already got one. If you can afford it, buy Henri Cartier-Bresson, Photographer.

bdcolen

rutt wrote:

It seems there is really no escaping him, at least for me, and that's a good thing.

I gave a presentation about him in BD's documentary photography class last spring and some recent posts have made me remember that BD and I don't exactly agree about what was his best work and some other details. I pulled together the pictures and notes I used for this presentation into a journal gallery. I'd have posted these inline, but it's a dgrin convention not to do so with copyrighted work. Note that these are very poor reproductions. It's well worth your while to buy a book of his if you haven't already got one. If you can afford it, buy Henri Cartier-Bresson, Photographer.

Speaking of books...Yesterday I saw a new book entitled "Photographing America: Henri Cartier-Bresson / Walker Evans - 1929-1947," which I highly recommend. It is a photographic visual education in and of itself - absolutely fabulous.

michswiss

Thanks for the links to the books. I've been meaning to ask what I should be studying and reading when I'm not out shooting.

Rutt, I read through your notes but didn't see anything particularly in depth that could lead to a difference of opinion. I would be interested in hearing yours and BD's views. HCB is obviously a strong influence on what I feel I want to accomplish with a camera.

One of the things I haven't felt in an HCB image is contrivance.

rutt

I'll try to move this discussion to this thread from the hijack in the people forum.

bdcolen wrote:

rutt wrote:

BD and I have a slight disagreement about this. I had to do a presentation on a Magnum photographer for BD's class and chose HCB. My thesis was that he grew from being a surrealist with an extraordinary eye for composition into an extraordinary people photographer, one of the best PJs and portrait photographers of all time. His career was neatly divided by WWII during which he was a soldier, a POW, escaped, worked for the resistance. I think he did his best work after the war, especially documenting partition in India. Lots of those shots were "decisive moment" shots in the sense that we imagine: just one chance to get them. They don't light Gandhi's funeral pyre a second time. The collaborator is only accused once in war crimes court. There are lots of examples.

I am not saying that BD is wrong. No doubt HCB also worked scenes as BD describes. Some of his most famous images only really make sense once one thinks of them that way. I'm just saying that by the time he published "The Decisive Moment" in 1952, he wasn't really being disingenuous about how he worked.

Ah, Rutt, Rutt, Rutt...Yes, there was only one "instant" in which the torch touched the wood, and there was only one instant in which the enraged woman confronted the collaborator as she did, but both of those were on-going, photographic situations which extended for moments if not hours. I would be willing to bet that HCB shot numerous images in each of those situations, and we are seeing the perfect image that emerged from each.

I am in no way suggesting that he was not a genius - I believe him to be one of the truly great artists of the 20th century. As you know, in many ways of think of him more as an artist whose paint brush was camera, rather than as a photographer in the traditional sense. But then that makes sense in that he reinvented photography.

Our disagreement is subtle, but substantive. You describe the "real decisive moment" of seeing the potential in a scene and then working it, waiting for the right juxtaposition, for the bicycle to come along, for the first flame on the pyre, &etc. And yes, I agree that HCB did that quite a bit. Knowing that he did that has changed how I look at his shots, actually. It's the only way to make sense of some of the amazing compositions.

Where we disagree, is that I think by the time he published The Decisive Moment, he was also able to respond very quickly to once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. I think that not all his shots were precomposed and waited for spiderlike. True, he was there, working the funeral, the trial, the famous portrait clients. But I could have been there, I could have had the composition, and I might well have missed the moment. Being there, working the situation, was necessary to getting the shots, but it wasn't sufficient. Those 10,000 worse shots also figured in the equation.

And, those 10,000 worse shots included some of the most famous images of photographic history. Give me the images from Gandhi's funeral and you can keep the Gare St. Lazzare.

bdcolen

rutt wrote:

I'll try to move this discussion to this thread from the hijack in the people forum.



Our disagreement is subtle, but substantive. You describe the "real decisive moment" of seeing the potential in a scene and then working it, waiting for the right juxtaposition, for the bicycle to come along, for the first flame on the pyre, &etc. And yes, I agree that HCB did that quite a bit. Knowing that he did that has changed how I look at his shots, actually. It's the only way to make sense of some of the amazing compositions.

Where we disagree, is that I think by the time he published The Decisive Moment, he was also able to respond very quickly to once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. I think that not all his shots were precomposed and waited for spiderlike. True, he was there, working the funeral, the trial, the famous portrait clients. But I could have been there, I could have had the composition, and I might well have missed the moment. Being there, working the situation, was necessary to getting the shots, but it wasn't sufficient. Those 10,000 worse shots also figured in the equation.

And, those 10,000 worse shots included some of the most famous images of photographic history. Give me the images from Gandhi's funeral and you can keep the Gare St. Lazzare.

We don't disagree on the question of whether he had an uncanny ability to grab those once-in-a-life-time (or for him many-in-a-life-time) moments. Where we disagree, I believe, is on the question of what were and weren't the truly great images, and whether or not his work was "better" or "worse" - ludicrously relative terms in the case of HCB - before or after the WWII experience. I simply am not nearly as taken with the Gandhi funeral pyre image as you are, and I think Gare St. Lazzare is astounding. I am far more impressed - on the whole - by the surrealist work, by the compositions qua composition, than by most of the photo journalism.

But that's what makes horse races, and sells photo books. Were we agree is that we both believe him to have been an astoundingly talented artist.:D

rutt

You know, every shot I picked for the presentation is astoundingly good. I just think some of the postwar work is like the best photography ever. Take everything you like about the prewar work -- great composition, humor, that sense of moment -- and add a huge helping of humanity and an amazing ability to be there and get the shot under the most difficult of situations (in the case of Gandhi's funeral at least.) Sigh. Who among us wouldn't sell his soul to have taken just a few of those pictures?