Language of the Lens
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Paris the most beautiful city in the world, was captured and
frozen in time by the great master of photojournalism, Henri
Cartier-Bresson, who brought beauty and a new dimension to an
ordinary street scene. Photography, he once wrote is a
spontaneous impulse which comes from perpetually looking, and
which seizes the instant and its eternity.
Henri elevated "snap shooting" to the level of a refined and
disciplined art. He exclusively used the Leica 35mm rangefinder
cameras equipped with normal 50mm lenses or occasionally a
telephoto for landscapes. He was one of the first photographers
to shoot in the 35mm format and helped to develop the
photojournalistic "street photography" style that influenced
generations of photographers to come. He was the father of "the
decisive moment," when everything in a picture was entirely
balanced.
He often spoke of the geometry of photography. "Change your
position by a millimetre and the geometry changes," he said.
"This cannot be calculated but needs to be instinctive, when I
start thinking, everything's lost. What counts in a shot is its
plenitude and its simplicity."
During his boyhood, Henri experimented with a 3 X 4 view
camera. However, his main interest lay in painting. When he was
19, he went to study painting with Andre Lhote, the Cubist
master. There he learned about angles, walls and the way things
tilt. His still-lifes and Paris street scenes are indicative of
his subtle and
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sensitive eye for composition.
In 1931, at the age of 22, Cartier-Bresson spent a year as a
hunter in the West African bush. Catching a case of backwater
fever, he returned to France to convalesce. It was at this time,
in Marseille, that he first truly discovered photography. He
obtained a Leica and began snapping a few pictures, and within a
decade, he was famous. "The only thing about photography that
interests me is the aim, the taking aim." "Nothing is lost," he
says. "All that you have ever seen is always with you."
After World War II, he resumed his career as a photojournalist
and helped form the Magnum picture agency in 1947. Assignments
for major magazines would take him on global travels, across
Europe and the United States, to India, Russia and China. Many
books of Cartier-Bresson photographs were published in the 50's
and 60's, the most famous being 'The Decisive Moment' (1952). A
major milestone in his career was a massive, 400-print
retrospective exhibition, which toured the United States in 1960.
As a journalist, Henri Cartier-Bresson felt an intense need to
communicate what he thought and felt about what he saw, and
while his pictures often were subtle, they were rarely obscure.
He had a high respect for the discipline of press photography,
of having to communicate a story meaningfully in one picture.
His journalistic grappling with the realities of men and events,
his sense of news and history, and his belief in
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the social role
of photography all pushed his work beyond the usual boundaries.
His work and his approach have exercised a profound and
far-reaching influence. His pictures and picture essays have
been published in most of the world's major magazines during
three decades, and Cartier-Bresson prints have hung in the
leading art museums of the United States and Europe (his
monumental 'The Decisive Moment' show being the first
photographic exhibit ever to be displayed in the halls of the
Louvre.)
No one captured the language of Paris so profoundly. The
incredible grace and movement he bestowed on all his subjects,
his attention to detail and powers of observation all came
together in one 'defining moment.' Photographs of men in bowler
hats, the abattoir workers, the lovers, the drunks, the
refugees, the tarts, the judges, the picnickers, the animals and
the kids. "Not art," he once commented when someone referred to
him as an artist, "just gut reactions to moments happened on."
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