Assignment Research: Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer most famous for his book The Decisive Moment.  He is also considered to be one of the pioneers of street photography.  Cartier-Bresson is renowned for his timing and he believed that to capture real life his subjects must be oblivious to the camera.

Cartier-Bresson always used a Leica camera which he placed black tape across the metallic front to stay hidden from his subjects.  He mainly used a 50mm lens and black and white film.  He didn't crop his images because he felt that this would dilute their meaning.

Behind The Gare Saint Lazaire, Paris, 1932.

"Behind The Gare Saint Lazaire" is probably Cartier-Bresson's best known photograph and it demonstrates his use of the decisive moment.  Most of his shots are spontaneous and would be gone in the blink of an eye and this is no exception.  The photograph shows a man in mid air leaping over a large puddle of water.  The man is blurred due to him moving so quickly running towards the train station.  The thing that makes this photograph great is the background, There is a poster with a leaping man on it almost identical to the subject and the words Railowsky is advertising a circus making the picture quite humorous and ironic.  The questions I find myself asking are, was the shot down to luck?  Did he see the posters before the shot or was it only afterwards that he saw the irony in the image?  Either way it doesn't really matter, it all must have happened so fast that it's a credit to him that he captured that decisive moment.

Hyeres, France, 1932.

In another moment that would have been gone in a flash, a boy races past on his bicycle.  The blur of the subject gives you that sense of speed.  I like the composition of the shot, the way the curve of the steps matches the curve of the street.

Seville, Spain, 1933.

Children play in the rubble caused by the Spanish Civil War.  The pathway between the buildings draws the eye and leads the viewer into the destruction.  The blast hole in the wall makes a perfect frame within the photograph.

Henri Cartier-Bresson's journalistic photography gave people the chance to see world events how they really were without political agenda and this gained him international recognition, however it's his quickly timed, gone in a flash shots that remain his most famous.