What does this picture say to you...

Carterofmars

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Boy, I hope I chose the correct forum to post this question in...

A wonderful image made by HCB.

What story do you derive from this image?

1.jpg
 
I'm high and want to **** you, I'm goin to play like I don't want it.

In all reality, I think it's a good image. My eyes are taken from the top right corner to the mans face, the man desireing eyes drives me to the emptiness face of the lady.

It makes me think of how men look down on women.
 
I'll stick by my comment in the other thread...

"I think a picture can tell a story, sometimes many stories but every story it tells will be unique to each viewer."

This picture tells me a story. Recognising who they are makes that story for me a tad more interesting than if they were a random couple....although none of it may be in fact be true at all. I don't really care, I'm a romantic.

Pictures may not tell the facts, but they can tell a story. That story can be as bland or rich as the viewer's imagination.
 
I'll stick by my comment in the other thread...

"I think a picture can tell a story, sometimes many stories but every story it tells will be unique to each viewer."

This picture tells me a story. Recognising who they are makes that story for me a tad more interesting than if they were a random couple....although none of it may be in fact be true at all. I don't really care, I'm a romantic.

Pictures may not tell the facts, but they can tell a story. That story can be as bland or rich as the viewer's imagination.

Exactly my feeling.
 
It says this is the "story" he captured in that fraction of a second! I was watching an interview with HCB the other day and he was talking about a portrait he took. The woman, I forget her name but it doesn't matter, was looking happy and he took her portrait. As he continued to talk to her, he then mentioned someone who she had fallen out with and suddenly her face changed and the relaxed smile was gone! If he hadn't already got the picture he wanted, the chance would have gone.

So with this picture, the "story" told a moment before and a moment after may have been very different.
 
Could she be deeply in love with the man in he photo, but she is deep in thought, thinking about a grocery list she accidently left at home on top of the breadbox?
 
Is that not Henri himself with his wife.....? Only the heavy proprietorial arm makes me think otherwise. Not very aristocratic.
 
I would be very surprised if that were HCB. It's a Magnum photo by him -- did he do self portraits?

Seems to me also a major misreading of the picture that he's just lusting after this woman; what is interesting, most interesting given the probable year -- late 1940s? -- is that she is dark/southern and he is light/northern. I strongly felt it was an American picture, somewhere west of the Mississippi, but his face could be French/Dutch/German so who knows. She would almost have to be Spanish, no? I also got the strong feeling of working class people who were in some sort of situation, the kind of situation (trouble) only the working poor get into, having to pay some fine that they can't afford or something similar. She looks oppressed in a way that he does not.

So does anyone know what it really is?
 
It seems to me to be a good projective test item: a stimulus picture that gives the person being tested a lot of freedom to project their own personality into it. In fact, it is reminiscent of one of the stimulus items on the Thematic Apperception Test, or TAT. I could probably use it in the office!
 
OK it's Spain 1936 and it is Cartier Bresson, with a wife I had not heard of ( he later married Martine Franck, who was quite glamorous...). With that jacket and shirt and the buttons open and given the year, HCB must have been at the height of his period identifying with the proletariat. Magnum does not call it a self portrait though obviously it must be.
 
Ahhh, no big deal, you are reading way to much into it.

I was just explaining to my wife how I had just sold our car, the one she is leaning against, to buy my new Leica. We would be rich with all those pictures I could shoot if only her dad would loan me some money for film.

If I recall, she was about to ask me to bring her clothes and other things back over to the house when I came to talk to her Dad about the loan.

I don't rightly remember if I got the loan or not!
 
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