"If one photographs people, it is their inner look that must be revealed."

R

ruben

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Probably many dwellers here, excluding me, do reckognize this phrase, which I hapened to find yesterday by chance.

It belongs to Henry Cartier Bresson.

"If one photographs people, it is their inner look that must be revealed."

Is it true ?


Cheers,
Ruben
 
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I think in a successful portrait - yes it is true... or at least a very noble aim for the portraitist.

I had not heard that attributed to HCB before, interesting.
 
I believe this IS true for a certain TYPE of picture: an INTIMATE portrait, but not true for ALL pictures of people.

Good lead for a thread, Ruben!
 
"If I photograph people the results must be such that everyone who browses through my portfolio must be very impressed by me..."

That was my motto when I started taking pics at 17 years....A bit of an antipode to HCB's statement. And now 26 years later I think his is better for me and my photography....

Regardless of the above mentioned I spend more time portraying one person as I felt that in the first two hours I wouldn't get what I was looking for...
 
Every photo of people shows less or more of their inner look. The question is: is there anyone (including the photographer) who can decode this inner look.

My personal opinion about statements by HCB is: he often quoted sentences, which fit perfectly to his own view, but make other photographers feel second-rate. Some of his theories are holy grails of photography, but there are photographers with complete different visions who produce first-class pictures, too.
 
I find the full quote even more interesting since it brings it in context with oneself:

HCB said:
In whatever one does, there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart. One must come to one's subject in a pure spirit. One must be strict with oneself. There must be time for contemplation, for reflection about the world and the people about one. If one photographs people, it is their inner look that must be revealed.
Click to expand...
 
This one is much, much better ... photo must tell a story, sometimes we must read that photo/story many times ... without that photo is failure!
 
"In whatever one does, there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart. One must come to one's subject in a pure spirit. One must be strict with oneself. There must be time for contemplation, for reflection about the world and the people about one. If one photographs people, it is their inner look that must be revealed"

Many thanks Roland for helping me by exhonerating me a bit for an out of context quote.

Rather than dealing with HCB, my interest is focused in the concept itself. I think this is the prevailing one elsewhere, with great exceptions here and there (Anny for example).

Yet, as far as my intelligence goes, the yellow part of the sentence, highly contradicts the red one, subject to discussion by me on this thread.

In the yellow part, we find one of the key elements standing in our way to reveal the inner look: the photographer's viewpoint

Cheers,
Ruben
 
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PetarDima said:
This one is much, much better ... photo must tell a story, sometimes we must read that photo/story many times ... without that photo is failure!
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... agree (nodding vigorously), and sometimes the story can only be told using more than one photos, or even an image made out of multiple photos like Stu Levy's amazing "grid portraits".

I enjoy pictures that are taken with HCB's famous "decisive moment" approach, but I also enjoy (sometimes more so) a consistent *series* of photos.
 
PetarDima said:
This one is much, much better ... photo must tell a story, sometimes we must read that photo/story many times ... without that photo is failure!
Click to expand...
I think that's a great thing to aspire to, but then that means that many successful photos are a failure. Or rather...maybe the above quote is just too fundamental in its view that it does not leave room for an open mind?

I've seen that there are photos that don't tell a story, and are absolute successes.

If there's a "story" through a photo, it is as objective as its viewer.

A photo is as successful as the viewer wants it to be. It can tell a wonderful story, but we all know that wonderful stories don't make photos!

Photos make viewers, and viewers make stories for the photos.
 
ruben said:
Rather than dealing with HCB, my interest is focused in the concept itself.
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Concepts by themselves do nothing. Context give concepts meaning, and concepts give contexts meaning. Mathematics (which are not photographs) can deal with concepts by themselves.
 
ferider said:
I find the full quote even more interesting since it brings it in context with oneself:
HCB said:
In whatever one does, there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart. One must come to one's subject in a pure spirit. One must be strict with oneself. There must be time for contemplation, for reflection about the world and the people about one. If one photographs people, it is their inner look that must be revealed.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Now, that makes sense.

Of course, HCB was never one to deal with absolutes. It would have been petty for him to qualify everything he said with "this is not an absolute view". For someone who saw himself as an "anarchist", I can see how his views are not canned absolutisms.
 
ruben said:
"If one photographs people, it is their inner look that must be revealed."

Is it true ?


Cheers,
Ruben
Click to expand...

No, not true. It is the depth of compassion of the viewer that must be revealed.
 
Surely a fashion-portrait is the picture of the clothes, make-up etc - not a picture of the person inside them ?
 
I've read this quote now several times in this thread and frankly I find it meaningless. Just what is an "inner look"? Who can judge if it is shown in a photograph? Does a person have just one inner look? Does it change? Does it evolve? I certainly admire the photography of HCB, but this seems so vague that one can put a multitude of interpretations on it.
 
Gabriel, you've helped me to understand myself ... thank's :) ... maybe I wan't to
'' cover '' my bad shots, plenty of them with telling stories :p
Yes, a photo as it is ... naked must be good enuff to make a connection with a person who look at it. I must underline that!
Sitemistic, HCB told about that : A photo must '' grab '' '' take '' a photographer
to make it ... in other hand he told about decisive moment, and in the same time
he take a series of shots to make a perfect composition of a same subject...
 
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