The Decisive Network: Producing Henri Cartier-Bresson at Mid-Century

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The Decisive Network: Producing Henri Cartier-Bresson at Mid-Century

Nadya Bair


I know we are all aware of much of this, but this is a very interesting long paper (and fascinating read) discussing the notion that HCB didn't go of it alone in terms of producing the end product, but was aided by a deep network of photographic and artistic professionals (throughout his career) which HCB was appreciative of. Lots of interesting tidbits, insights, images, and citations. Enjoy!

(Scroll down to read online)
https://www.academia.edu/26162801/Th...aphy_May_2016_

Abstract

Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photobook The Decisive Moment (1952) popularised the notion that the best photographs are made by the patient and gifted photographer who captures a fleeting moment with just one click of the shutter, creating an image with internal geometry and balance. The book solidified Cartier-Bresson’s reputation as an artist working with a camera and it encouraged scholars, curators, and hobbyists to understand photography as the product of trained individual vision and talent. Yet the book’s emphasis on personal vision also deflected attention away from the collective efforts and infrastructure necessary to promote Cartier-Bresson’s practice as art. By shifting our attention to the decisive network of magazine editors, book publishers, printers, and curators who helped Cartier-Bresson onto a highly orchestrated road to fame at mid-century, this article considers the ways in which collective work is central to the material and social history of photography, and how these realities challenge the decisive moment’s paradigm of individual and inspired creation.

pp. 148-149

By attending to the often overlooked names and stages of production that went into making and publicising The Decisive Moment, this article shifts our attention to the decisive network that shaped how Cartier-Bresson’s first photobook was presented to the public, especially in the USA, in the mid-twentieth century.

In so doing, it underscores that despite the central paradigm of the decisive moment, Cartier-Bresson’s photography – as a body of work and as a social and material practice – was always the product of a long process rather than the split instant, and that it involved many individuals beyond the photographer.
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