Images a la Sauvette

When considering the history of photography, one cannot understate the influence of Henri Cartier-Bresson, who is superseded perhaps only by the likes of Ansel Adams in popular nomenclature. In contrast with Adams’ sweeping landscapes on large format film, Cartier-Bresson made his reputation with a small, portable 35-millimeter film camera. A master of being in the right place at the right time to capture his “decisive moment,” Cartier-Bresson was equal parts artist and photojournalist. His photographs are celebrated as a triumph of talent and artistic vision, and they catalog lives and societies across the world throughout his expansive career spanning much of the 20^th century. Though his concept of the “decisive moment” has come to define his portfolio to the masses, looking at his entire body of work through this singular lens is an oversimplification. Seeing the concept of the “decisive moment” as actual (or future) instants or places in time obscures much of its meaning and reduces photography to an asymptotic race to perfection.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was born in 1908 in Paris, France. His father the owner of a locally respected textile company, Henri was implicitly expected to take over the family business after his father. But he showed an inclination for the arts from an early age. He was fascinated by literature and painting, which would mark his first foray into the visual arts. His painterly study would expose him to the “rising star of surrealism” (Galassi, 9), which would have a notable influence on much of his earlier painting and photographic work. He brought to photography a depiction of reality that seemed almost crude compared to contemporary trends. One critic, Julian Levy, compared Cartier-Bresson’s work to “’the great S’s of American photography’ – Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand, Sheeler” – Levy compared his style to the ‘crude motion and crude chiaroscuro’ of Chaplin’s films: ‘bad photography in protest against the banal excesses of the latest Hollywood films’” (Galassi, 44). Cartier-Bresson however did not see himself as making ‘bad’ images in “protest”. After his return from a trip to Africa that nearly killed him, Cartier-Bresson had “… lost his taste for the polite art of easel painting” (Galassi, 16). It was then, with his acquaintance of surrealist artists and small, concealed camera, that he set out to make some of his most well-known images. “I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to ‘trap’ life…” (Cartier-Bresson).

1932, Paris, France

1932, Hyères, France

1933, Seville, Spain

 “Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes” (Cartier-Bresson). It is this quote that is featured in Lyle Rexer’s book, and it is through this lens that most viewers see Cartier-Bresson’s photographs. It doesn’t take long for him to be mentioned, and his name appears a few pages into the first chapter. He is used as an example of the “…traditional ‘philosophy’ of photography: there is a pre-existing reality to be captured, this reality makes sense, and its significance can be discerned and communicated by a photographer through a single image abstracted from ongoing experience” (Rexer, 12). Here, Cartier-Bresson’s photographs are used as a simple example of the “traditional” philosophy and rules of photography that are to be broken by later artists. If one’s only acquaintance with the artist were through this brief mention, one might think him a rigid, stale photographer with little imagination beyond what is explicitly visible. Granted, Rexer’s book seems more concerned with the past as related to contemporary practices and interpretations than an outright “history of photography,” but the use of his work nevertheless colors how he is viewed in the context of photography and art today. Cartier-Bresson receives one other mention, in the chapter on street photography, where Rexer refers to the “dynamic interplay” between his subjects, compared to Winogrand’s “alien units” (Rexer, 62).

HCB, 1948, Shanghai

Garry Winogrand, 1980-83, Los Angeles

When one compares the photographs of Cartier-Bresson with other street photographers from other decades, it becomes clear that the “decisive moment” is not a point in time, but an attitude of thought. Cartier-Bresson’s photographs are not pure, sterile, and unchanging, the lens angled and the shutter actuated at some arbitrarily perfect instant. They are his decisive moment, the moment at which meaning, chance, and intention coincide.

Works Cited:

Cartier-Bresson, Henri. The Decisive Moment. Simon and Schuster, 1952.

Galassi, Peter. Henri Cartier-Bresson: the Early Work. Museum of Modern Art, 1986.

Kirstein, Lincoln, and Beaumont Newhall. The Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson. The Museum of Modern Art, 1947.

Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, www.henricartierbresson.org

“MoMA.” MoMA, www.moma.org/.