Who would you be? HCB or WeeGee?

Who would you be? HCB or WeeGee?

  • Weegee

    Votes: 25 18.2%

  • Henri Cartier-Bresson

    Votes: 112 81.8%
  • Total voters
    137
1. Weegee seems to have done a lot of late-night stuff. I like going to bed.
2. Weegee had a sad life in the end after failing as a cinematographer.
3. HCB had a hum-dinger of a wife.
4. HCB was rich and came from a rich family, so did as he pleased.
5. HCB got free Leica stuff.
6. HCB went to exotic places, met interesting people, and shot them--with a camera I mean.
 
julianphotoart said:
1. Weegee seems to have done a lot of late-night stuff. I like going to bed.
2. Weegee had a sad life in the end after failing as a cinematographer.
3. HCB had a hum-dinger of a wife.
4. HCB was rich and came from a rich family, so did as he pleased.
5. HCB got free Leica stuff.
6. HCB went to exotic places, met interesting people, and shot them--with a camera I mean.
Click to expand...

As I read your reply, I heard James Stewart's voice, as if he were speaking in the movie, "Anatomy of a Murder".

It was perfect, and you've said it all.
 
I don't know. There is certainly some truth to that list in favor of HCB, but Weegee's world from 1935 to 1945 was a rip the like of which is the stuff of legends. Plus he seems to have loved what he was doing and been a good guy to hang with. HCB? Well, let's just say I doubt he & I would ever share a beer while talking about how to shoot the crowd watching a murder scene... 😉 So give me him in the days of his '38 Chevy with it's police radio & trunk darkroom & desk instead.

William
 
julianphotoart said:
1. Weegee seems to have done a lot of late-night stuff. I like going to bed.
2. Weegee had a sad life in the end after failing as a cinematographer.
3. HCB had a hum-dinger of a wife.
4. HCB was rich and came from a rich family, so did as he pleased.
5. HCB got free Leica stuff.
6. HCB went to exotic places, met interesting people, and shot them--with a camera I mean.
Click to expand...

I am a night owl ... so Weegee is more my style

but the wife, the free leica stuff, and just the HCB life (post p.o.w) would be quite amazing

but like I said I am still more a fan of smith
 
I'm kind of spoiled for this kind of question since I accidentally stumbled across "Steam, Steel and Stars" with O. Winston Link's outstanding and plain amazing photographs three weeks ago. Now I have this strange desire to ditch my rangefinder and start collecting flash bulbs.

Philipp
 
HCB was loaded and photographed what he pleased when he pleased (+ he was blessed with talent as well as money). Weegee was a working stiff.

Let's see... wandering around France with a little Leica and a bank roll or chasing the police through the seamier side of NY lugging a Graflex with flash to pay the rent. Not much of a contest for me.
 
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I have been taking pictures since I was a teen, and that was a few decades ago, and in that time I may have a dozen photographs that I consider as good as anything Cartier-Bresson shot. And I'm happy with that! I have always admired him and was lucky enough to see a three-floor retrospective of his work at the Museum of Photography in Paris, a few years before he died. Cartier Bresson was fortunate in that he had the money from his family to support himself and just take pictures, and from that, built a career with Magnum that is unsurpassed. There are many great photojournalists--Capa, of course, Steve McCurry, David Alan Harvey, David Seymour, Gilles Peress, Susan Meiselas, Elliot Erwit, Martine Franck...but he is, in my estimation, the greatest of all.
 
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