Contacts - Henri Cartier Bresson

Nh3 said:
It was more like a decisive day or a decisive few hours or 15 minutes etc... 🙂

I say that because he [HCB] decided on what camera/lens/film to use, he took a light reading and then he chose to be in a particular place (even if he went for a walk he still decided which direction to go) and then most often he waited for 'everything to be in the right place' - but this clip showed that he kept shooting like any other photographer "just to make sure"...

He bracketed!
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Where did you get that information? Years ago there was a documentary made on HCB, where the filmaker followed HCB around the streets of NY (I believe it was NY). Anyway, the film clearly showed that HCB did not bracket anything, at least in the situations shown. I can imagine that in some kinds of "static" situations, where there is time to adjust, that he would "bracket" just like any of us would. But that has nothing to do with photographs that exude the "decisive moment."

As for Robert Frank---a great photographer, and one who is just like the rest of us...that is to say, one who is capable of making silly statements.

Cheers...
 
I don't see it as bracketing so much as making adjustments. David Hurns in "On Being a Photographer" said that all great photographers shoot this way.

I love HCB. He was the first photographer that I truly made an impact on me. Before I discovered his photographs, I somewhat thought that photography, as art, was a bit frivolous and often superficial. I've come to admire many other photographers, especially Kodelka and Salgado, but HCB still remains my favourite. He was the one to open up my eyes to the world photography and I never tire of looking at his photographs.
 
Al Kaplan said:
I think that it'd be a good experience for some of the newer younger photographers to be handed a single 36 exposure roll of Tri-X and given three asignments with a four hour deadline to get finished prints on the editor's desk.
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That's a recipe for a major case of Whine! I shot something this weekend, and they expected the photos the very next morning. I can't imagine them dealing with film in that case.

It's the age of McPhotos, unfortunately. The profession in "professional" is now only defined by whether you receive money or not these days, not by application of skills and time onto it, I'm afraid.

You really needed to know what you were doing, rather than just crank stuff out from a digital file; which is why most digital cameras have the color settings as a preset.
 
I keep a Eugene Smith quote on my darkroom wall, which I think is apropos to this discussion:

"Negatives are the notebooks, the jottings, the false starts, the whims, the poor drafts, and the good draft but never the complete version of the work... the print and a proper one is the only completed photograph, whether it is specifically shaded for reproduction, or for a museum wall. Negatives are private, as in my bedroom."

I keep this quote up to remind me to shoot first and ask questions later. It reminds me that I don't ever need to justify why I shoot anything to anyone. For me, Cartier-Bresson's negatives are nothing to judge him by. Seeing them makes a legend seem more mortal perhaps, but in the end he should be judged by his finished work, which I think the World agrees is the gold standard in photojournalism.

It is certainly instructive however, to see which image a photographer chooses to print among a series. Interesting, but as Smith states, not the work itself. Just because we snap the shutter doesn't mean we made a photograph worthy of working into a print for publishing or hanging in a gallery.

I also feel that photography has a characteristic to the process which is very different from painting, drawing, or even sculpture - many of the other visual arts are created through a building process - the artist has an idea, and then brings material together in an additive way to represent the idea. Layers of paint, coils of clay, objects in an installation etc. In the Art of photography, we reduce. We take everything and boil it down to one thing. We consider every possible place in the World, every possible event or person, and then choose from all the angles, lenses, filters, effects, films, developers etc - and we get to one, single choice - a pure reduction of everything. To perfect that reduction and get an image that is the way we saw it takes a lot of shooting, because unless we are in a studio (yuck) we aren't ever in full control of the elements we have to work with. So I don't know why we're suprised Cartier-Bresson occasionally bracketed. He also shot masterpieces while not even looking through the camera, and he laughingly admitted it. But one thing is for sure, it took his eye to realize that he had a materpiece on his hands when he saw the contacts.
 
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HCB's greatest achievement was superb composition on the fly. But then again he seemed to be only interested in "pretty pictures" and the question arises if he had gone to photograph the aftermath of WWII and the concentration camps (which he didn't), how he would've "composed" those types of images?

But then again he was never interested in the dark side of human exsitance and thats why his photos are "glib" and relentlessly optimistic. That is not surprising because he was a rich and prevelidged guy who never had to worry about making a living... And his "pretty pictures" are easy to like because they don't ask anything of the viewer, unlike the works of Gene Smith, Robert Frank, William Klein or Salgado.

I'm not dissmissing HCB and trying to annoy its fans, I was one of his fans as well and I still deeply respect his legacy, but for me thats where it stops.
 
Nh3 said:
But then again he was never interested in the dark side of human exsitance and thats why his photos are "glib" and relentlessly optimistic. That is not surprising because he was a rich and prevelidged guy who never had to worry about making a living... And his "pretty pictures" are easy to like because they don't ask anything of the viewer, unlike the works of Gene Smith, Robert Frank, William Klein or Salgado.
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You have to love comments like this. Makes you wonder which photographer we're talking about. I just got through reviewing the anthology. The whores...the dead partisan at the foot of the bridge...the woman denounced...the human refuse laying dead or drunk in the street...the one-legged boy on crutches. Such glibbness, such relentless optimism. Right.

Cheers...
 
remegius said:
You have to love comments like this. Makes you wonder which photographer we're talking about. I just got through reviewing the anthology. The whores...the dead partisan at the foot of the bridge...the woman denounced...the human refuse laying dead or drunk in the street...the one-legged boy on crutches. Such glibbness, such relentless optimism. Right.

Cheers...
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Totally agree, remegius. Further, if you're going to talk about "pretty pictures"....well, it's hard not to think of Salgado....but I won't go there as this place seems sometimes to be a Salgado Worship Centre.
 
remegius said:
You have to love comments like this. Makes you wonder which photographer we're talking about. I just got through reviewing the anthology. The whores...the dead partisan at the foot of the bridge...the woman denounced...the human refuse laying dead or drunk in the street...the one-legged boy on crutches. Such glibbness, such relentless optimism. Right.
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Spot on. Nowadays, bumper-sticker phrases are the only thing used to digest anything. Complexity is discarded by bias and/or mental laziness.

That's why the most beloved artists tend to have only one style, either as output, or as focus by their worshipers and/or detractors.

This viewed is summed up by their common complaint: "distracting".
 
remegius said:
You have to love comments like this. Makes you wonder which photographer we're talking about. I just got through reviewing the anthology. The whores...the dead partisan at the foot of the bridge...the woman denounced...the human refuse laying dead or drunk in the street...the one-legged boy on crutches. Such glibbness, such relentless optimism. Right.

Cheers...
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Those images were 'found objects or subjects', not a concerted effort to travel to one particular place and photograph a particular social issue which needed attention.

Salgado went to Sahel and spent a lot of time in the most dreadful situation and amongst unimaginable human misery and yet he photographed those suffering famine and starvation with such lyrical beauty that any human being with a conscience cannot walk away after viewing those photos and not feel like shedding tears... His pictures are not simply pretty but beautiful as in one describes a beautiful poem.

Eugene Smith risked his life photographing the workers poisoned by a chemical factory and in the process was beaten up and yet his photos of the deformed girl in bath is a masterpiece which reminds one of Michelangelo’s Pieta.

Robert Frank went around US and photographed the racism, boring jobs and bleak landscape, saying that American dream is an illusion and in the process had to endure even being thrown in jail for three days in some place down south. While his book The Americans was dismissed and hated by everyone in US – however, now its considered the most important work of photography in the second half of twentieth century.


While in the mean time HCB photographed celebrities, artists, Sadus in India, some places in china and although those were nicely composed images, they lack depth of feeling and make no statement about human condition apart, 'its all good because it looks good on photographs'... He hang around the right circles and therefore got the exposure and he always took photos which did not ruffle any feathers.

Anyway, I'm just sick of the hype with HCB and lets not creates idols of one photographer in the expense of others, because it hurts photography as an art.
 
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Nh3 said:
Anyway, I'm just sick of the hype with HCB and lets not creates idols of one photographer in the expense of others, because it hurts photography as an art.
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Idols? The expense of others? It hurts photography? Preposterous! It's time for you to examine why poor 'ol HCB is living rent free in your head.

Cheers...
 
remegius said:
Idols? The expense of others? It hurts photography? Preposterous! It's time for you to examine why poor 'ol HCB is living rent free in your head.

Yes..."remegius" I think you have nailed from 500 yards out. Good Shot.

The only people who are creating idols...are normally boot lickers who are normally more engaged intelectuaizing the hiden meanings and other crap.

Much like arm-chair quaterbacks.....If we want to angonize over people getting "idol" status...look at the "group" behind the "push" Follow the trail of the money.

My best case for this hype mongering is the owners behind Ansel Adams his work and the after his death his negatives and publishing rights of that work. I think even Adams would be uncomfortable with being treated like some sacred cow.

Many of these legenday "artists" were in reality massive self promotional performers. Look at the commerical relationship between Adams and the Sierra Club....he was president, what 7 times. The single source for calendars and other commerical materials.

HCB is by comparison almost a unmarketed artist. Magnum was in the end a much greater gift to photographers in general. As up to that point there had never been an agency to promote photographic work world wide. Sure HCB had some books published but was basicly a non promtional artist. And did not really consider himself to be "A Photographer" personality.

Not a self anoited disciple of "Photograpic enlightment" as much of the "Monterey Gang" that is now so worshiped in fine art circles. Or as I like to call it the " only dead guys" are great syndrom.

Eveyrone has a view on this but, as I see it those seeking "fame" never deserve it" and those who do never actually know it in their own lifetime.

All the best.....Laurance
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I don't know if anyone has mentioned this, but the "Contacts" series is available on Netflix (for those over here in the USA, at least). HCB is on the first disc, and yes, it's got an english voiceover so we dumb merkins can understand what he says.

I found the work of some of the other photographers on Vol. 1 to be more interesting than HCB's, and for the most part, their commentaries were a little more meaningful. Some of the narrations are more discriptive and explanatory, some (mostly the French photographers, it seemed) were definitely commenting on a existential/philosophical/poetic level that's really quite lost on me.
 
remegius said:
Idols? The expense of others? It hurts photography? Preposterous! It's time for you to examine why poor 'ol HCB is living rent free in your head.
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I couldn't have said it better.

It's like complaining about Leonardo da Vinci, and how he doesn't deserve any praise and hype because, well, because somebody doesn't like him, and he just didn't paint like Thomas Kincaid.

Damn you, Leonardo, and your Renaissance ways! 🙄
 
Nh3 said:
While in the mean time HCB photographed celebrities, artists, Sadus in India, some places in china and although those were nicely composed images, they lack depth of feeling and make no statement about human condition apart, 'its all good because it looks good on photographs'... He hang around the right circles and therefore got the exposure and he always took photos which did not ruffle any feathers.
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You obviously don't understand a thing about HCB. As a former prisoner of war in WWII, who escaped a Nazi prison, and with strong views against war and inequality, you fail to see how he brings out beauty in the most appalling areas.

Exhalting flaws is easy. Transforming them into beauty, that's art.
 
Is there any edition of the whole series which speaks french with english subtitles?
I just can't stand hearing fake english voiceovers. When someone talks about his art, I do want to hear the emotion in his (or her) voice.
 
Nh3 said:
Robert Frank went around US and photographed the racism, boring jobs and bleak landscape, saying that American dream is an illusion and in the process had to endure even being thrown in jail for three days in some place down south.
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Wow, really, three days in prison? HCB was a POW, and he managed to escape on his 3rd(?) attemp. Sorry, the germans did not alloy any cameras in the camps... You have no faintest idea what your talkin about. Please be quiet.
 
He was what he was. You can't judge mid twentieth century photography by twenty-first century vision. It was a far different world and people had very different concerns. He documented what interested him. You like them or you don't.
 
Well, I know I cannot change the mind of HCB fans but I hope at least I provided the impetus to look far beyond one's idols and see if there is anything else worth looking at.

I also thank you for the laugh by comparing HCB to Da vinci and Ansel Adams. 🙂

peace,
 
Nh3 said:
I also thank you for the laugh by comparing HCB to Da vinci and Ansel Adams.
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Reminds me of a famous HCB quote:

"The world is going to pieces and people like Adams and Weston are photographing rocks!"

😀
 
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