Henri Cartier-Bresson

[JimL]

Yesterday I finally made it to the HCB exhibtion at The Dean Gallery, Edinburgh.

Whilst not a definitive or exhaustive representation of the great man's work it is, however, a hugely impressive exhibition with many images on display for the first time. Humour, sensitivity and compassion exude in abundance.

If you can get there, go.

Jim.

 

[SolaresLarrave]

According to Alessandro Pasi, who wrote "Leica, Witness to a Century", most of CB shots were posed. Also, somewhere in Photo.net I read he was a lousy man at metering, and that his printer saved a lot of his photographs (negatives were too thin or too thick).

However, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to undermine his work, which is astounding. Simply revealing some little tidbits that show the shortcuts he took on his road.

Sometimes I wonder what he would have done with a more modern camera... The story behind the image of the man jumping over a puddle is just fun: he "stalked" the guy, with his Leica II in hand, and pressed the shutter release in the right moment, thus immortalizing a man's leap of faith to keep his trousers dry.

Is that print in the exhibit?

Sorry about the long post... I'm feeling chatty this morning! 🙂

 

[JimL]

Not too sure if I buy the line that most of his shots were posed. There are plenty of images where the subject is aware of the camera and reacting to it but many the shots look genuinely candid. There is a naturalness and unselfconciousness (is that a word or have I just invented a new one?) about the subjects which make me think they were unstaged. I could be totally wrong, it happens, and seeing what I want to see though.

As for the technical quality of HCB's work; it is surprisingly poor in many cases! Poor exposure, out of focus, camera shake, squint horizons... They're all there! It doesn't detract from the image though except a couple of cases where they are so out of focus it distracted me. Proof again that technical excellence is desireable but secondary to vision. Several of the photographs evoke surprisingly strong emotional responses, surely the mark of a great artist's work. The shot of the man jumping the puddle is on exhibit and is much better in reality than any reproduction I have seen.

A few of his early images were enlarged to considerable sizes. It's amazing how good those old films and Leica glass really were! Much better than I expected. Some very fine detail was resolved with real clarity even on a few huge enlargements. The printing was absolutely superb by the way.

I left the exhibition feeling both desperate to grab my M-6 and start shooting street scenes, and completely unworthy of it at the same time! No change there then!!!

 

[richiedcruz]

According to Alessandro Pasi, who wrote "Leica, Witness to a Century", most of CB shots were posed. Also, somewhere in Photo.net I read he was a lousy man at metering, and that his printer saved a lot of his photographs (negatives were too thin or too thick).

However, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to undermine his work, which is astounding. Simply revealing some little tidbits that show the shortcuts he took on his road.

Sometimes I wonder what he would have done with a more modern camera... The story behind the image of the man jumping over a puddle is just fun: he "stalked" the guy, with his Leica II in hand, and pressed the shutter release in the right moment, thus immortalizing a man's leap of faith to keep his trousers dry.

Is that print in the exhibit?

Sorry about the long post... I'm feeling chatty this morning! 🙂

Are you sure? I have the same book and it does not mention anything about HCB's pictures being posed, although it does point out that some of Doisneau's pictures were made using models or friends.

Richie

 

[Roman]

I don't have the book about HCB, but I recently read 'Bystander', and it does mention the case of Doisneau: most of his pictures showing kissing couples were posed, using actors as models - this was discovered in the 1970s, when some of these models sued him for royalties from picture sales; according to Doisneau, he had to do this because the pictures were intended for publication in a magazine, and that magazine feared that they might get sued by people captured in kissing scenes, if they used 'real' street-shots; Doisneau claimed that most of the scenes were re-enactments of ones he had seen in reality, though.

About HCB: there are various sources that claim that some of his pics are posed - there is one of a little girl running up some steps in a Greek village, and that little girl was the daughter of one of HCB's friends, who he asked to run up there to add interest to the image. I've also read that the picture with the man jumping across the picture was not completetly unposed - HCB did find that scene, but asked the man to jump a few times to make sure he got it right (though I don't remember where exactly I read this, some book about the history of photography...).

Roman

 

[back alley]

those shots were not really fuzzy - that was the leica glow!!😉

joe

 

[SolaresLarrave]

Passi's mention of Doisneau's pics is relatively insistent, and, if I remember correctly, appears both in the text and in his section on Doisneau. In HCB's case, he only mentions it in the text, not in the section (illustrated by the shot of the man pouring wine in the foreground) devoted to Cartier-Bresson.

It's a bit hard to believe that some photos may have been posed, but if there's smoke there is a fire. However, the method does not diminish the merit: what these guys did was simply "create" a scene they already had viewed in their imagination. That girl coming upstairs towards the photographer adds a human dimension to the stairs, and so do the Spanish women looking intensely at the camera in his photo of women doing their hair.

Again... his foibles should be seen as something he, in a way, overcame. 🙂

Let's hope we do the same thing with our own quirks! 😀

 

[Roman]

Frankly, I prefer a good posed shot to a bad unposed one...
Hey, getting a good posed one to look natural is at least as difficult as getting an unposed one to look great.
What W. Eugene Smith did with lots of his pics - extensive retouching, even altering the content/message of pics by that - is a different story, though (and yet Smith's pics look great and 'work' as they are supposed to).

Roman

 

[SolaresLarrave]

I agree with you, Roman! As good ole Ansel said, the negative is the score, the print is the performance... so we want good performances, good prints, good final products! 🙂