HCB Appreciation

[Alan Edward Klein]

Well, Cartier-Bresson, for one. That should count for something.

But, pace HCB, why decide how people should experience photography? For some, the feeling of form, of coherence, is deeply moving and satisfying—as if you were able to actually look at a fugue by Bach (not the score: the music itself).

For others, yes, it is emotion—straightforward, apparent, unmistakable.

And for others still, the mysterious combination of both, that unnamed region where one and the other are one, indistinguishable. We're talking Beethoven's late quartets, here.

What is exceptional about Cartier-Bresson is that he gives you all that.

Please don't abbreviate my post and take short sections out of context. My point was in these two pictures, emotion carries the pictures more than form.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Well, evidently you do. Who cares about iron railings?

Please read my last post.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

The contact sheet for #2 shows that he was very keen on that composition of the wall and tried quite a few things out. It's in the Magnum Contact Sheets book.
View attachment 412967

It seems to me he was looking for the right expression and actions of the kids?

 

[tcolgate]

It seems to me he was looking for the right expression and actions of the kids?

He tries portrait, landscape, various other positions, always framing with the wall. These things aren't all or nothing, he wasn't taking abstracts, but he very often has well framed geometry and layers. He didn't do Gilden style head shots.
Given his background as a painter (and obvious love of that form, he cultivated friendships with painters, Matisse did the cover of The Decisive Moment), it's fair to expect his instincts in photography were influenced by his painting, and in painting we often use techniques and devices to abstract and check composition (trying to turn off the bits of our brain that interpret a scene so that we can appreciate and place forms(. That inverting viewfinder is in line with that approach.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

My point was in these two pictures, emotion carries the pictures more than form.

My point is your post is missing the words "for me".

 

[Arthurwg]

It seems very confusing to be switching from right-side up to upside-down viewing and vice versa. Why would he do that?

Not upside down viewing, just right to left reversed.

 

[Don_ih]

Not upside down viewing, just right to left reversed.

You can use that viewer to look at things upside-down.

 

[cliveh]

Not upside down viewing, just right to left reversed.

It is just a guide, but upside down viewing allowed me to take this image: -

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

He tries portrait, landscape, various other positions, always framing with the wall. These things aren't all or nothing, he wasn't taking abstracts, but he very often has well framed geometry and layers. He didn't do Gilden style head shots.
Given his background as a painter (and obvious love of that form, he cultivated friendships with painters, Matisse did the cover of The Decisive Moment), it's fair to expect his instincts in photography were influenced by his painting, and in painting we often use techniques and devices to abstract and check composition (trying to turn off the bits of our brain that interpret a scene so that we can appreciate and place forms(. That inverting viewfinder is in line with that approach.

16 shots on the contact sheet. So much for knowing the decisive moment. I wonder how many of his other "decisive moment" shots required a dozen shots to make the shot decisive?

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

My point is your post is missing the words "for me".

Well of course it's for me. It's my point. Adding for me would be redundant.

 

[Don_ih]

16 shots on the contact sheet. So much for knowing the decisive moment. I wonder how many of his other "decisive moment" shots required a dozen shots to make the shot decisive?

Probably a lot. What does that matter? Is there something wrong with trying to get the best possible photo?

 

[images39]

It is just a guide, but upside down viewing allowed me to take this image: -

View attachment 413019

Man, that's great photo. Well seen!

Dale

 

[warden]

16 shots on the contact sheet. So much for knowing the decisive moment. I wonder how many of his other "decisive moment" shots required a dozen shots to make the shot decisive?

Well, it is HCB after all, so probably several of those images have a decisive moment or are in some other way terrific. But you have to pick one, you know? So somebody chose.

I need to get that book.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Well of course it's for me. It's my point. Adding for me would be redundant.

Just shows that sometimes redundancy can be both a quality and a necessity.

 

[tcolgate]

16 shots on the contact sheet. So much for knowing the decisive moment. I wonder how many of his other "decisive moment" shots required a dozen shots to make the shot decisive?

A lot of his quotes and interviews suggest he was really selling this idea of that "one shot" magic. It's not reality, just a sales pitch. Much like his insistence that photographers shouldn't crop, which is something he did when he needed to. Being truly honest does not seem to be a prerequisite to being a truly great photographer. He did also admit a great photograph takes luck. It's easier to get luckier if you take more photos

 

[snusmumriken]

16 shots on the contact sheet. So much for knowing the decisive moment. I wonder how many of his other "decisive moment" shots required a dozen shots to make the shot decisive?

I’m still unsure whether HCB coined the ‘decisive moment’ phrase, or whether it was dumped on him by his publisher, perhaps by over-distilling elements of HCB’s mercurial conversation. It generates misconceptions, and HCB clearly wearied of trying to explain the way he saw things.

What I understand of his beliefs, from various interviews, is that there may be (but isn’t necessarily) a ‘decisive moment’ when all the elements come together to form a perfect image. Those elements include not only components of the subject, but also the camera position and where it is pointing. About the latter, HCB pointed out that the difference between an exquisite composition and something ‘meh’ (as you would say) may be a movement of millimetres. Sometimes (often? usually?) it isn’t possible, or the subject has changed or vanished, and there is no decisive moment.

Sometimes the photographer can both recognise the moment and be able to nail it in one shot. HCB’s portrait of the Joliot-Curies is a famous example, where he took the photo as soon as they opened the door, then spent the rest of the visit taking photos out of politeness. But sometimes in the heat of the moment the photographer can only make several attempts and hope he has nailed it. In other words, recognising and selecting the moment can happen either before or after pressing the button. Discarding failures that fail to meet the artist’s standards is a valid aspect of photography or painting or pottery or bow-making or most other creative practices.

 

[Don_ih]

The phrase "decisive moment" becomes far less problematic if you demystify it and simply understand it as the best time to take the photo of the moving scene before you. But people treat it like it's his own brand of magic. It's not magic at all.

HCB pointed out that the difference between an exquisite composition and something ‘meh’ (as you would say) may be a movement of millimetres.

The kids behind the broken wall was an example of that. The broken wall acts as a framing device - shifting the camera a mm would've cut off one side.

It's worth considering he likely had just a few seconds to take all those photos.

 

[snusmumriken]

The phrase "decisive moment" becomes far less problematic if you demystify it and simply understand it as the best time to take the photo of the moving scene before you. But people treat it like it's his own brand of magic. It's not magic at all.

It was HCB himself who applied Zen mysticism to the issue. I don't think it boils down quite as simply as you suggest. There will be a 'best' time to take any photo, whether the result is good or bad. This is more about recognising something, sometimes in a fraction of a second, sometimes a lot longer. [Personally, I usually recognise that Zen moment by noting that I failed to take a photograph ]

It is just a guide, but upside down viewing allowed me to take this image: -

@cliveh: That's a really wonderful photo!! Endlessly puzzling and fascinating. I had to invert it again to understand how you took it.

 

[Don_ih]

This is more about recognising something, sometimes in a fraction of a second, sometimes a lot longer.

In other words, the right moment to get the best photo.

It's altogether up to you to add mysticism to it.

 

[nikos79]

Form and content aren't separate, and brilliant photographers such as Cartier-Bresson can see both at the same time, to a point where they are indistinguishable.

Respect. Form becomes content and they are one and only.

 

[nikos79]

Guys you keep repeating over and over this phrase "Decisive Moment" as if there is something that characterized every photo of HCB. He never said it. The closest he said was that. And it was beautiful capturing the essence of photography and its relation to life:

"I enjoy taking pictures, to be present. It's a way to say: yes, yes, yes! And there's no maybe. All the maybes should be thrown in the trash. Because it's a moment. It's a presence. It's there. And it's respect and joy, tremendous joy to say: yes! Even if it's something you hate: yes!. It's an affirmation: yes!"

 

[nikos79]

Probably a lot. What does that matter? Is there something wrong with trying to get the best possible photo?

"After the images appear, we are forced to part with those that, although correct, are less powerful." - Henri-Cartier Bresson

 

[nikos79]

Some more quotes of Henri-Cartier Bresson about form:

"My greatest joy is geometry. That is, the structure. You don't go out to photograph shapes and forms, but it's an aesthetic joy, and simultaneously an intellectual joy, to have everything in the right place. It's the recognition of an order that is in front of you."

"With the word form, I mean a strict aesthetic organization, through which, and only, our perceptions and emotions are specific and transferable. In photography, this visual organization can only be the event of a spontaneous sensation of plastic rhythms."

 

[Don_ih]

Guys you keep repeating over and over this phrase "Decisive Moment" as if there is something that characterized every photo of HCB.

It's his tagline whether he liked it or not.

 

[nikos79]

And some very interesting quotes about Henri-Cartier Bresson's work:
Would be interesting to hear your counter-argument thoughts

"Despite his love for painting and especially drawing, which he devoted to in his old age, photography was the medium that highlighted him early on and gave him the opportunity to leave a profoundly significant personal work. His few journalistic-style photos simply reflect the post-war photographic fashion and do not organically integrate into the main body of his work, which he described as surrealistic. Cartier-Bresson's interest lay more in the area where the elements of the world generated peculiar coincidences. His images convey the photographer's restrained character, with his subterranean explosions and carefully concealed tenderness.

Cartier-Bresson convinced us that he positioned himself opposite the world to capture its inner order and derive a complex (organic, sensual, and intellectual) joy that the actual world does not provide him. Cartier-Bresson is not a photographer of events. His moments do not stop time; instead, they extend it or generate their own time. Through the few photographs that represent his most robust artistic proposition, one can discover a new world and not merely recognize, as happens in any photography, a world already known. Cartier-Bresson reacts to stimuli from the outside world to convey his inner balance. His and the world's.

In most of his photographs, the subjects are treated with phlegmatic respect and are used as elements of the whole rather than emotional burdens. Perhaps in this way, the photographer respects the photographed even more, rejecting the dubious sincerity role of the sympathizer and adopting that of the observer-orchestrator, the only one ultimately capable of eliciting genuine emotion. Cartier-Bresson uses form to give each event its significance, thus altering the hierarchy of values of everyday life and revealing the hidden and possibly spiritual meaning of things."

Plato Rivellis in his section "Important photographers and their work"