Henri Cartier-Bresson on the 'key' to a great photograph and "Geometry"

Flyfisher Tom

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I am sure some of you may have already viewed this documentary:

Henri Cartier-Bresson : The Impassioned Eye (2003)


It is now available on dvd from amazon. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...sr=11-1/ref=sr_11_1/002-8097770-5160042?n=130


It is a very informative and well-done documentary including extensive interviews with the master himself, reviewing his most celebrated photos. Filled with insights from HCB on technique (not gear). With commentary from other Magnum photographers (Erwitt, Koudelka among others) on the art and precision of HCB's work.

Most insightful, in my opinion, is his repeated emphasis on the "geometry" of his photos relative to other photographers' work (I frankly lost count of how many times he used that word in the film). And although I had always thought that geometry was the distinguishing hallmark of his work vis a vis the other great photographers (Winogrand, Frank, Walker etc), it was rather insightful to have the master himself state emphatically that his use of "geometry" was his personal foundation of photography. For once, we get HCB's own confirmation of this principle, as opposed to conjecture from photography historians/critics/afficianados asserting it from the outside.

In any event, it is a very well-done film, and well worth some thought provoking viewing if you haven't had the chance to see it. In reveiwing my HCB books after viewing the interview, I would have to concur that his most moving photos truly distinguish themselves from the works of other photographers by their sublime geometry of lines, angles and juxtaposing subjects in a photo.

cheers
 
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the contest is ending soon??? when did it beggin? the thing on the front page says stay tuned for rules and I have been waiting forever it seems for them to update it
 
Leica_Magus

My pleasure entirely 🙂

The documentary is unique in several respects. For one, it is a retrospective of sorts, interviewing HCB in his late 80s-90, in the relative familiarity of his own Paris apartment. This gives it an interesting weight, as HCB is considering the sum of his work in total, after the passage and consideration of time.

Second, contrary to rumors of HCB's aloofness and standoffishness, I found him to be quite open and frank about his techniques and more importantly, his guiding principle, that of geometry. I think it is rare for artists/photographers to be so blunt and specific in stating the core of their personal philosophy. I guess I was expecting oblique, mysterious, mystical, almost zen-like one-liners from HCB (similar to Winogrand's retort for why he shoots a subject, "to see what it would look like as a photograph" paraphrase). Luckily, that did not happen.

He also gives some anecdotal background for some of the photos, why he took it, circumstances behind the shot.

In any event, I really enjoyed it, and will view it again soon, I'm sure. I am sure amazon/france will have it available. If not, let me know. cheers!
 
As an aside, I purchased the William Eggleston DVD as well, partly to force myself to see if I can appreciate his work. You know that feeling you get when you stare in vain at a painting that everyone else around you is oooing and awwwing about?

That pretty much sums up how I felt about Eggleston, before and after the film ;-) Oh well, at least I tried.
 
and here i am after "the democratic forest" came in the mail. in the afterword, he says this about hcb:

I had picked up The Decisive Moment years ago when I was already making prints, so the first thing I noticed was the tonal quality of the black and white. There were no shadow areas that were totally black, where you couldn't make out what was in them, and there were no totally white areas. It was only later that I was struck by the wonderful, correct, composition and framing. This was apparent through the tones of the printed book. I later found some actual prints of the same pictures in New York. They were nothing — just ordinary looking photographs, but they were the same pictures I had worshipped and idolized, yet I wouldn't have given ten cents for them. I still go back to the book every couple of years and I know it is the tones that make the composition come across.
 
Eggleston in one of my favourite photographer... It took me a while to "get it" though.
The way he uses colour and the composition in his shots is amazing in my opinion.
But as the French saying goes "Les gouts et les couleurs, ca ne se dicute pas" (rough translation" "You can't ague tastes and colours").

I also like HCB in a different way and I read that he used to look at his contact sheets upside-down in order to evaluate the geometrical and compositional value of his photographs.
 
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Hi,

I think I saw this one on Dutch tv last week.
Although I like his pictures very much, I wasn't very impressed with this documentary.
I see HCB in his appartment listening to classical music and holding up his pictures without hardly any comment. No info at all why he was there, what was going on, why he founded Magnun. And especcially why he started to take pictures instead of following his great love: painting. Just HCB holding up pictures and grinning. For me it was quit boring.
I'm really interested how somebody can become one of the greatest photographers when he's really only interested in painting! But no answer at all.

Cheers,

Michiel Fokkema
 
Michiel Fokkema said:
And especcially why he started to take pictures instead of following his great love: painting. Just HCB holding up pictures and grinning. For me it was quit boring.
I'm really interested how somebody can become one of the greatest photographers when he's really only interested in painting! But no answer at all.

Michiel:

I disagree that he hardly comments at all in the documentary. In fact, I found his comments quite illuminating. In many instances, he holds up the photo in question, and comments on the significance of that photo to him. But, illumination, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder 🙂

You pose an interesting question, though, regarding his professed love of painting/sketching versus photography. I think the truth maybe that one is not always given the greatest talents in one's first love. In this case, HCB's photography talent far outstrips his sketching talents ... while his passion for the latter far outstrips his passion for the former. A bit of mixed blessing to be given talent in your second love, and not your first ;-)
 
Leica_Magus said:
That hurt. Not easy viewing if you've got a soul, a brain and a heart.

I have to disagree. The only person HCB had to please was himself, thus his preferences are ultimately of no concern to us - we might as well regret that Shakespeare failed to write novels.

But - there is something much more important; the qualitative difference between drawing and photography. I draw and take photographs. Photography is an essentially collaboritive art. Put bluntly, the photographer must have something to photograph. The challenge is to bring the outside in - to create an image of external reality reflecting personal vision

Yet to draw is to enter a wholly different world. The subject exists within the imagination; the challenge here is to bring the inside out. In my personal experience the latter is a far more intense process - at best a creative frenzy in which mundane consciousness ceases to function and one enters a state of - joy, focus, transcendence, call it what you will. It is a literally absolute condition - that is, has no dependence on anything outside itself.

Now, such a state may very well be attainable in photography - but I suspect this is mainly in the darkroom; in the manipulation of the image to conform with subjective imagination. HCB had no interest in such things.

Photography and drawing are dissimilar arts. I love both for different reasons and have no intention of denigrating either... But - just as inept snapshot may have a personal value beyond all reckoning, so mediocre drawings may conceal creative ecstacy. HCB fulfilled himself. That is all that matters.

Regards, Ian
 
"Photography and drawing are dissimilar arts." -- Jocko

I agree, they are, but they may be done for similar reasons. There is a current book out called "Temperaments -- Artists Facing Their Works" by Dan Hofstadter. The book is made up of a series of essays about quite dissimilar artists, including HCB (in my opinion the best essay.) In the HCB essay, which was written when HCB was devoting himself to drawing, Hofstadter includes a scene in which there is an incipient photograph, or drawing, like one of HCB's best. But HCB doesn't have a camera or a drawing pad; so when the "decisive moment" happens, HCB just pokes out a finger to capture it, to mark it. He is essentially portrayed as a man who was captivated by looking at the world, and the camera and the drawing pads were different ways of intensifying his view. He really wasn't as much interested in the products (the pictures) as he was in the moment itself, in the looking. I got the feeling that he wasn't really what we think of as a professional photographer in the National Geographic sense, a guy who could go anywhere, and take a picture of anything. He tended to be quite interested in a specific range of subjects, and not at all interested in others...a kind of World War II-era French intellectual who also happened to be a natural with a camera. The reason his drawing was never very good is that artists who draw are interested in the image they are putting down; it's the image that counts, not the model, because the image becomes its own reality. HCB was always more interested in the model, what the French call the motif...and that's why he was such a natural with the camera. The process of drawing ultimately interested him more than the process of photography because it forced him to look at the motif for a longer time, and to look more closely. But I suspect that, in the end, he wasn't much more intersted in the drawings themselves than in the prints. I mean, he liked them, he enjoyed them, he apparently loved good printing, but he didn't have a really deep regard for them; he had a really deep regard for the experience itself, the one that led to the photograph or the drawing.

JC
 
John Camp said:
he had a really deep regard for the experience itself, the one that led to the photograph or the drawing.

JC

Exactly, John - you put it perfectly. In a sense the product (photograph or drawing) is irrelevant, except to the extent that it allows others to enter into the imaginative experience of creation. From a Platonic viewpoint (which I personally endorse) one might argue that all art seeks to transcend its subject, so ultimately tends towards abstraction. I find HCB's "geometry" strikingly similar to the impulses which drove Mondrian towards the pursuit of pure form. I'm also very struck by your thoughts on HCB and the motif. There's an interesting parallel with William Blake and his constant emphasis on "minute particulars"- in a "decisive moment" of pure focus in which one "see a world in a grain of sand". Blake is doubly intriguing, as in many ways a seemingly mediocre artist and yet a towering genius. He deliberately chose not to pursue his obvious route to artistic "success" and the popular acclaim he identified as failure.

I have no real knowledge of HCB, but I wonder if he ultimately abandoned photography because he was so good at it, thus avoiding the straitjacket of "style" and reasserting the primacy of creative experience...

Regards, Ian
 
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