Contacts - Henri Cartier Bresson

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Teus

Thijs Deschildre
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A friend of me, that doesn't speak French himself, passed me a French documentary on HCB. The movie goes through his contact sheets, while HCB talks and explains his photography. It's very technical, but gives a great insight into his way of shooting.

It showed me more than anything else that the best photographers are first artists, and then techies. With a little help from my friends, I translated and subtitled the documentary in English. I hope you people find the docu as interesting as me.



62Mb film, Xvid codec
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Hmmmm...

Frances (my wife) talked to HCB's printer at Arles one year a while back. And I've always been a great admirer of his.

You have to remember that HCB was

A A rich kid who didn't need to earn a living

B French, and therefore given to intellectualization

C A genius

so I'd not put too much emphasis on believing the way he explains things.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger, that may be the most concise summary of M.HC-B ever, and not inaccurate in any way !

Thank you for posting - I will watch the clip with interest and try to use my rusty french too. I hope there are no copyright problems with the film btw.
 
I have this on dvd. It's part of a compilation called Contacts.1 (dvd 1 of 2) about the artistic processes of various famous photojournalists: Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Klein, Raymond Depardon, Mario Giacomelli, Josef Koudelka, Robert Doisneau, Edouard Boubat, Elliott Erwitt, Marc Riboud, Leonard Freed, Helmut Newton, Don McCullin.

Unfortunately, it's dubbed instead of subtitled so I never quite enjoyed HCB's own talking since I don't know french. Thanks for sharing!
 
I'm downloading the whole serie from a p2p program...is in french too..but with my catalan..i expect understand somthing;)
There're another documentary of him, called l'espgne vivra, anyone seen it?
 
mike kim said:
Unfortunately, it's dubbed instead of subtitled so I never quite enjoyed HCB's own talking since I don't know french. Thanks for sharing!
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Ah. It was likely there was some kind of translation around, but now I know. It's legal to freely share this fragment for educational uses, please don't let this derail the thread. Translating this was as well fun as it was an exercising my french

too bad the Contacts DVD is dubbed, I hate dubs violently. I'll see if I can get the DVD's, its plenty interesting. I've seen parts of a one-hour TV interview with HCB, but it was in American style, hyped and not-in depth. HCB reallly didn't feel at ease, who looked more like a senile old man.
 
Pitxu said:
But Roger, please, just because the man is "French, and therefore given to intellectualization" is no reason to "not put too much emphasis on believing the way he explains things."
Isn't that rather conceited of you?
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No. I listed three reasons, to be read jointly, not severally. Any one is not a reason to be suspicious. All three taken together -- another matter.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger, I can't explain it as sussunctly as you but I too feel HCB was talking more rubbish than truth when he spoke of how he came to his photos. It's often too hard to explain properly and truthfully why we do things. We all do it, so why not HCB. And in his case, the world believed him, so why not stick with it? :)
 
Pitxu said:
I've seen the whole series of "Contacts" which was aired on French TV a long time ago, all very educational.

But Roger, please, just because the man is "French, and therefore given to intellectualization" is no reason to "not put too much emphasis on believing the way he explains things."
Isn't that rather conceited of you?
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I think most great artists are not the best sources for analysis of their works or philosophy. That's a bit counterintuitive, and it's not to say their self-analysis isn't interesting. But it's usually just one of the puzzle pieces. They're usually so close to it they can't really explain it.
 
Thank you, Teus, for the very interesting documentary. Just two nits to pick, one is that I think--I know very little French--that at some point visage (face) was translated as "vision", and that the name of the photographer mentioned by HCB was Halsman, rather than "Balseman" (Philippe Halsman, a portrait photographer quite famous in the 50s). Again, these are just a couple of nits, and I'm thankful for the documentary and for your great job with the subtitles--not an easy thing to do. Re Roger Hicks's comments, I only agree with #3: the man was a genius. I fail to see the relevance of #1, the rather dismissive "A rich kid who did not need to earn a living", particularly since, from what I know of HCB's life, he certainly did not live it like a rentier, quite the opposite. As for #2, you do not have to be French to intellectualize, which, according to Webster, means "to give intellectual or rational form or content to". In this specific instance, HCB tried to explain the act of photographic creation, I think pretty successfully. His defining photography as a craft stands in refreshing contrast to those photographers, such as the author of a wretched article in The Luminous Landscape, recently discussed in this forum, who use the words "art" and "artist" with no discrimination whatsoever.
 
A lot of "rich kids" were successful as photographers and writers, not so much for their talents as for the fact that they attended the same prep schools and universities as the editors of the magazines or the art directors at the ad agencies, as did their fathers before them. I think that HCB had more talent than most but he also had the money to wander the streets and shoot film at will. Financial security can be liberating.
 
Roger Hicks said:
B French, and therefore given to intellectualization
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Hello Roger, I'm sorry but I don't buy this at all (and I'm French and teaching philosophy ... but French people are not more given to intellectualization than German, American, Italian ...etc. It depends on education, not on language or nationality or even culture).

sitemistic said:
As I've said before, HCB doesn't, in interviews both written and video, seem particularly interested in photography.
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And as I've said before, do not believe him when he says that photography was a minor activity for him, or that he would have prefered to paint ... etc. Bull****. He spent his life photographying, he founded Magnum, he was proud of being honoured as the most talented photographer (was he?) : that's facts, not words.

Genius? I don't want to open Pandora's box ... but what is genius exactly?

I really like HCB; he was one of the greatest photographers, he changed our vision ... but I don't buy myths about him (or anybody else).

Best,
Marc
 
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Oh Teus, man thank you so much for sharing this, what an eye opener.

Now I would like to share my thoughts.

If people still believe in the decisive moment after watching that video, then..... I mean come on, isn't that obvious that the guy was just pressing his button times and times again? It looks like he cained number of frames on the same subject, like the rest of us, and one of them stood out.

This has to be the best documentary on the decisive moment =)
 
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Marc-A. Exactement. The pontifical opinions of French character/perspective/whatever always amuse me.
 
Marc-A. said:
And as I've said before, do not believe him when he says that photography was a minor activity for him, or that he would have prefered to paint ... etc. Bull****. He spent his life photographying, he founded Magnum, he was proud of being honoured as the most talented photographer (was he?) : that's facts, not words.
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I couldn't agree more. HCB had an extraordinary 'eye' as a photographer, even if he didn't capture quite as many 'decisive moments' as the myths suggest, but as a painter he was amateurish and unoriginal. He does seem to have had a talent for pretentious bullsh1t but fortunately this was more than outweighed by his talent as a photographer.
 
Al Kaplan said:
A lot of "rich kids" were successful as photographers and writers . . . I think that HCB had more talent than most but he also had the money to wander the streets and shoot film at will. Financial security can be liberating.
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Dear Al,

That was indeed precisely my point.

As for Gallic intellectualization, having lived in several countries, I am sure that the French have a much greater tolerance of intellectualization than most. Intellectualization is not merely a product of intellect and education, but also of culture.

I find it amusing that something I would see as a compliment to French culture is being taken as the opposite.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
I find it amusing that something I would see as a compliment to French culture is being taken as the opposite.
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Well, Roger, you were pretty much saying in your point B that you don't believe a word of what he says because he's a French and they are given to intellectualization, so it's hardly surprising that it's not taken entirely as a compliment.

Back to my Knackwurst, Sauerkraut and mid-morning beer, with best regards from the humourless -

Philipp
 
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