Its still three parallel lines of trees for me...
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Santa brought me this wonderful book. It is a re-issue, so it includes a few more images than when first published. The photo that started this thread seems a lot more comprehensible in this context, there being several others with geometric compositions where the theme is landscape and its cultural history. The lack of polish of this photo simply looks in keeping with others of the same decade, and given the context that @Alex Benjamin discovered, one can surmise that it must have had a special significance for HCB. I’ve quite grown to like it through the course of this thread.
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HCB does not cut the head off anything. Rather he excluded the head of the horse as the farmer and his expression is of more interest. Just as he excluded the face of the mother in this image to put the emphasis on the child..
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Its still three parallel lines of trees for me...
Just as he excluded the face of the mother in this image to put the emphasis on the child..
Actually, what he wanted to do, in typical HCB fashion, was to establish a visual correspondance between the ribs of the boy, the shape of the mother's hand, and the wheel.
Actually, what he wanted to do, in typical HCB fashion, was to establish a visual correspondance between the ribs of the boy, the shape of the mother's hand, and the wheel.
that is all he saw on that moment....And so?
Possibly. But did he sacrifice more emotion for the sake of composition? Maybe by that time, he was inured to such sights and preferred seeking parallel shapes in unlikely settings. We'll never know, unless he shot one framed more to the left.
Yes we can see that from the image. My point was about exclusion of the mother.
How can you possibly make that statement when you have no idea what was to the left?
did he sacrifice more emotion for the sake of composition?
You're separating two things that in his mind (and eye) were inseparable.
Excerpt from the preface of The Decisive Moment : "In a photograph, composition is the result of a simultaneous coalition, the organic coordination of elements seen by the eye. One does not add composition as though it were an afterthought superimposed on the basic subject material, since it is impossible to separate content from form."
Here is more of the black wall and the wire fence to the left.
The garden picture we had here before was cropped on the left.
People make statements about hard and fast rules and their philosophy all the time. That doesn’t necessarily mean that is what they do in real life.
Cartier-Bresson's work is ample proof that he's one of those who does.
The picture as shown in the more recent post is considerably better than in the first.
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It's also from a different negative. It's not the same photo.
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Just like the Time Warp, it's just a jump to the left...
HBC was friends with Atget. I have an Atget book “From My Window “ could be some connection?
A number of years ago while in Paris we were at the HBC institute. My wife’s first language is French and we struck up a conversation with someone who was the director. He called HBC to see if we could visit but he couldn’t make it that day and we could come the next day but we were leaving Paris that day and missed out It would have been interesting
You're separating two things that in his mind (and eye) were inseparable.
Excerpt from the preface of The Decisive Moment : "In a photograph, composition is the result of a simultaneous coalition, the organic coordination of elements seen by the eye. One does not add composition as though it were an afterthought superimposed on the basic subject material, since it is impossible to separate content from form."
Cartier-Bresson's work is ample proof that he's one of those who does.
I'm sure that, like the rest of us, when he gets home and looks at the results, he wishes he had composed the shots a little differently. Giving him some Godlike status is just over the top. He's human and made mistakes like the rest of us. No one's perfect. He probably wished he had included the horse's head and the woman's whole body.
HCB does not cut the head off anything. Rather he excluded the head of the horse.....
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