DECISIVE MOMENT | passionproject

Henri Cartier-Bresson

"Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes

forever the precise and transitory instant. We photographers deal

in things that are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished,

there is no contrivance on earth that can make them come back again.

We cannot develop a print from memory..."

Considered by many to be the father of street photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson specialized in a photo journalistic style using 35mm cameras at a time when many of his contemporaries were using view cameras.

He set the standard for street photography. He thought of photography as a way of life. For almost five decades he used a camera to document life with a camera – but he thought of the camera as a version of painting – which he studied as well.

Born in Chanteloup, France on August 22, 1908, creativity ran through his family gene. His great grandfather had been an artist, his uncle was a noted printer - even his father had ventured into painting. And hence, with an education in Paris, Cartier-Bresson fell in love with literature and the arts. He began studying painting, under the early Cubist, André Lhote in 1927 - later moving to Cambridge University to be further immersed.

In 1931, after his release from the Army, Cartier-Bresson travelled to Africa with to hunt down boars and antelopes. Eventually growing tired of the sport, he left the continent with a newly fuelled interest: photography. However, this passion really began in his early teenage years. He recalled being struck by several of Martin Munkacsi’s photographs, in particular his “Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika”, a picture that showed a group of African boys frolicking in the water. If the shutter was pressed a millisecond earlier or later, the magical, interlocking composition would not have existed. “I suddenly understood that photography can fix eternity in a moment” Cartier-Bresson later said. Around that time, he would also go to the Café Cyrano to sit in on André Breto’s Surrealist gatherings. He had no regard for Surrealist paintings but was fascinated with their way of life - their emphasis on chance and intuition, the role of spontaneous expression and its overall emphasis on revolt. This was a great influence in his approach to photography.

Upon his return to France, Cartier-Bresson gave up painting and bought his first 35mm Leica. "I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to 'trap' life - to preserve life in the act of living," he recalled. "Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was unrolling before my eyes

For Cartier-Bresson there were direct parallels between the worlds of photography and painting. He believed photography was a way of life - the camera, a version of painting. From his studies of art in Paris, he took great influence from the geometric formalism of Renaissance painting, along with the serendipity of Surrealism. These were two key influences on Cartier-Bresson’s later works. Hence, he was very careful in focusing on every detail of the composition and structure of the overall photograph. His application of geometry to each image was rather poetic. Its composition integrated horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines, shadows, curves, circles, triangles and squares to his advantage. No more was in the photo than need be, the framing was always precise.

A vehement believer that each photograph should always be done in-camera, Cartier-Bresson was strongly against the idea of cropping and altering the image. If the composition or framing of an image was a bit off, he would disregard the photograph completely. This clarity of vision and ability to see the geometry of a fleeting image, and capture it in the blink of an eye reshaped a new standard for the art of photography.

He was interested in getting to the action, and so over the next half century, Cartier-Bresson would travel the world in search of stories that mattered. Calling himself a photojournalist, while inwardly holding onto the spirit of Surrealism, Henri Cartier-Bresson and his tiny 35mm Leica camera, witnessed some of the biggest events of the 20th century. He was with Ghandi a few minutes before he was assassinated in 1948. He was in China when the communists took over in 1949. From the Spanish Civil War to the German occupation of France, from the death of Russia’s Stalin to the French student uprisings of 1968, his sole purpose was to document these changes. He believed that: “Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.” And so he shared these photographs with the world, opening up the eyes of the public, and hence becoming known as the “eye of the 20th century”.

“He was the Tolstoy of photography. With profound humanity, he was the witness of the 20th century.”

- Richard Avedon

S O U R C E S :

"To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression." – From The Decisive Moment

This is a perfect representation of what Cartier-Bresson called the decisive moment, where his precision in composition, framing and geometry, down to the milimetre and millisecond, is seen.

The straight lines and jutting rectangles of the staircase, the checked patterning of the walls and floor, the curve of the pavement, the hexagonal spiral of the staircase railing – this is perfect example of how he used the geometry of the surroundings to his advantage. All of the different patterns, edges and shapes are contrasted amongst each other, and are emphasised through the use of shadows. This contrast is then balanced out, throught the cyclists movement. Bresson has captured this in such a way that the harsh geometric structure and stillness of the surroundings are slightly softened. The curve and blurriness of the cyclist's moving body is complimented by the defined straight edges of the architecture. The vectors of all its shapes and patterns are strategically placed towards the moving cyclist. This not only frames the subject in a natural yet beautifully precise way, but also brings harmony to the photograph.

Sitting on the staircase, this is very much representative of Bresson's style of photography. He believed in waiting for the subject to enter his image, rather then following it with his camera. Hence, this photograph shows the spontaneous precision and accuracy used in each of his works. If he had pressed the shutter a millisecond early or late, the cyclist would have left the frame, and the moment would have disappeared.

One of the best photographers of the 20th century, Henri Cartier-Bresson had a sense of when 'natural crescendos' were about to occur. As shown in this photograph, he would release the shutter at the critical moment, when the full story came together. Possibly the most well known of his photographs, the 'Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare' is an excellent example.

Bresson's definition of photography, was 'aligning the head, the eye and the heart along the same line of sight'. The 'Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare' shows this perfect balance. His intention, along with the intellectual, aesthetic and emotional elements can be seen to merge together seemlessly.

Cartier-Bresson always used the geometry and symmetry of his background to his advantage (as seen in the photograph above). He noticed the beautiful frame from the faint industrial buildings from the background, to the foreground's pool of rain water. The harshness of the straight and jagged edges of the fence line, contrasted with the softness of the rippling water - both elements, although contrasting, also compliment each other in an effortless way - creating a beautifully balanced photograph.

With this perfect frame already set out, Bresson sat 'behind the Gare Saint-Lazare' and waited for a subject to enter. He was know to wait for the perfect interaction between the his subjects and their surroundings.

When a busy business man ran across the puddle onto a disregarded ladder, Cartier-Bresson snapped the shutter amidst his process of jumping from the ladder back into the water, adding a layer of contrast between the man's hurry and the water's stillness. Hence bringing life and movement to the otherwise still image.

He used the unique properties of black and white, as well as shadows and shapes to evoke a sense of rhythm and repetition. The stark contrasts of the light and dark between the sky and water relection, against the fence and subject, further emphasises the photographs geomteric structure and balance.