HCB: "I don't Like Photography, I never have"

Chriscrawfordphoto

Chriscrawfordphoto

Real Men Shoot Film.
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I've mentioned here on RFF a few times that I had read a quote from Henri Cartier-Bresson in which the great man states that he has never liked photography. I Couldn't remember where I saw it, but have finally found it.

In the March/April 1997 issue of Photo Techniques magazine, there is an article by John Loengard, the former Life Magazine photographer and picture editor. HCB asked Loengard to photograph him in 1987, because an exhibit of HCB's paintings was going up, and the gallery needed a portrait of the artist. In the article, published in Photo Techniques 10 years later, Loengard recounts his experience photographing the reclusive photographer. This quote is from the article:

"I rarely take pictures in the street anymore. I don't like photography. I never have," Cartier-Bresson told me back in Paris.
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In the late 1970s, HCB largely stopped photographing so that he could concentrate on painting and drawing, which he considered to be superior forms of art. Too bad, he was a much better photographer.
 
He was a very complex opinionated man by the sounds of it!

Considering he 'didn't like' photography he did a pretty fair job. :D
 
I wonder what 'poisoned' him....
Why he turned his back on it and returned to painting
Perhaps burnout ...or ???
 
I see HCB as a painter foremost. Never a true photographer, even though I love his photographic work. He approached his photography was high-minded art exercises. I personally hated photography until I turned 22. I was into film, design, music, and the humanities growing up, but never thought twice about photography.

Though photography is my passion today, people never acknowledge me as a "photographer". They think of me as an artist, and it doesn't surprise me given my background prior. Maybe it was just simply a stint for him.

Funny enough, I was standing in the bus yesterday, and part of me thought, "Sometimes this photography thing can be such a hassle with all this waiting. Would be more productive during all this downtime sketching!"
 
thirtyfivefifty said:
I see HCB as a painter foremost. Never a true photographer, even though I love his photographic work. He approached his photography was high-minded art exercises. I personally hated photography until I turned 22. I was into film, design, music, and the humanities growing up, but never thought twice about photography.

Though photography is my passion today, people never acknowledge me as a "photographer". They think of me as an artist, and it doesn't surprise me given my background prior. Maybe it was just simply a stint for him.

Funny enough, I was standing in the bus yesterday, and part of me thought, "Sometimes this photography thing can be such a hassle with all this waiting. Would be more productive during all this downtime sketching!"
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"Photographer" and "Artist" are not exclusive titles. Photography is an art form, just like painting or sculpture or lithography.
 
I think it's fair to say that his paintings and drawings are not notable, except for the fact that they were produced by a great photographer.
 
http://www.biography.com/people/henri-cartier-bresson-9240139?page=1

"But Africa did fuel another interest in him: photography. He experimented with a simple Brownie he'd received as a gift, taking pictures of the new world around him. For Cartier-Bresson there were direct parallels between his old passion and his new one.

"I adore shooting photographs," he'd later note. "It's like being a hunter. But some hunters are vegetarians—which is my relationship to photography." In short, as his frustrated editors would soon discover, Cartier-Bresson preferred taking shots rather than making prints and showing his work."
 
well, hatred gets in the way of complacency, and I dont know any person who is legitimately great at anything who could be described as complacent.
 
helenhill said:
I wonder what 'poisoned' him....
Why he turned his back on it and returned to painting
Perhaps burnout ...or ???
Click to expand...

I don't think he was poisoned he just thought of the camera as an immediate sketchbook. I think he just moved on to something else as many creatives sometimes do. I think he pushed the limit of his photographic work to a point where he said visually what he needed to say. He wasn't defined by the medium but instead helped define the medium.

I knew a guy years ago that was a photographer and a very good one and suddenly just stopped and started to collect instead. I asked him why he stopped and he said that he no longer had anything to say visually with his camera. Maybe something similar happened to Bresson.
 
The bio I read of HCB had him trying to get out of photography several times, usually into motion pictures. As I recall he finally committed when he got married and had to make a living.

I have never heard him say why he abandoned it later for drawing. But for a creative person with something to express, photography's realism can be pretty limiting. Certainly more so than drawing, painting, or film.

John
 
Maybe he hated photography like Lendl hated tennis. INTERVIEWER, after Lendl lost a match: "I guess after this result you must feel like giving up tennis?"
LENDL: "No, I feel like giving up tennis when I win a match. When I lose I feel like committing suicide."
 
I don't understand why in our little world here at RFF, some people have a problem with anyone refering to themselves as an artist rather than photographer. Especially with the insinuation that it's pretentious ... that's a damned condescending attitude IMO.

This turned into a dumb thread really quickly! :(
 
In many countries artists are indeed professionally qualified, more often than not. An artist makes art. For some it's all they do. Some make money out of it. Artist.
 
tunalegs said:
It can be pretentious though, and that can be annoying.
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Yes but that's just the foible of any pretentious individual who has probably gone through life pretending to be all sorts of things ... and they can generally just be passed by without injury.

Life's too short to worry about such things.:p
 
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