Henri Cartier-Bresson

Introduction: My tutor suggested I look at the work of this eminent photographer in attempt to inspire me to introduce some spontaneity and humanity into my own work. I borrowed from the library, a large tome of his work introduced by Yves Bonnefoy. I will start by reproducing what Cartier-Bresson wrote on describing his photography.

L’imaginaire d’apres` nature

“For me, the camera is a sketch-book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to give meaning to the world, one must feel involved in what one singles out through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, sensitivity, a discipline of mind and a sense of geometry.

It is through economy of means and above all by forgetting ones-self that one arrives at simplicity of expression.

To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It is at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.

For me photography is to place heart and eye along the same line of sight. – It is a way of life.”

I’ve looked through the book and chosen 5 images that I really like. I’m not sure if I can find the pictures on the web and link to them but if I can, I will. The book offers no information on the images other than a list of captions.
1. This is plate one in the book and is entitled; “Barrio Chino, Barcelona 1933”
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1987.1100.125

This made me smile the instant I opened the book. I needs no further explanation other than CB responded with the spontaneity that anyone carrying a camera would have. Perfect juxtaposition. Totally unrelated to the context of the photograph – looking at the drawing, I am reminded of the cowboy doll Woody from Disney’s Toy Story.

2. Plate seven in the book is entitled “Academician on his way to a ceremony at Notre Dame 1953”. The photograph shows three onlookers watching as an elderly gentleman dressed in a cape and plumed hat climbs into a taxi. More interesting than the academician, are the three onlookers. Their expressions show they are looking into the rear of the taxi at something or somebody we cannot see. A curious somewhat bemused gaze. Several questions arise; is this merely a queue at the taxi rank, is this a well known and respected figure that has drawn a crowd of well wishers or curious gawkers? The man in the beret on the left is wearing a dark stripe on his left lapel. Is he in mourning? His coat is well worn with an odd button. He has his right hand in his coat pocket and his left arm behind his back. He is standing with his feet apart. Does he have some sort of authority? The second man has a cigarette and is just about to strike a match. The third man’s stance and facial expression leads me to think he has just stepped into the foreground to look into the taxi. Up to this point I have not searched for any information about this image…….

The information about the photo which, is in the V&A collection, is as follows; “Black and white photograph of an elderly academician in ceremonial dress seen in profile, about to get into a taxi. To the left is a line of workers watching the man.”

3. “Rue Mouffetard, Paris, 1954” in the caption for plate 140. It shows a young boy about 8 or 9 years old, cradling a large bottle of wine in each arm, walking towards the camera, head held high with a cocky expression on his face. Several other children seem to be following him with excited curiosity, maybe anticipating a potential disaster or just enjoying his obvious pleasure and self importance………

See image here

Apparently, Cartier-Bresson showed up at the boy's 50th birthday party; they had kept in touch over the years. When he opened the door, Cartier-Bresson stood there cradling a magnum of wine in each arm.

4. “Barcelona, 1933” is plate 151. It shows an elderly woman walking past a mural on a long wall on which there is painted the rear view of a male and female figure. The female is holding aloft a furled parasol or umbrella in her right hand.. The walking woman holds a handbag in her left hand. Her right hand is held up to the right side of her head as if she has been struck. Again, perfect juxtaposition and spontaneity. Sold by Sotheby's London in 2007 for £12000. I like it but not that much.

Image here: http://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Barcelona--1933/5F746ACFBB33264E

5. The last image is plate 3 in the book and shows a man sitting on the curb in an alley, apparently talking to a cat. It is entitled “Downtown, New York, 1947”. The buildings soar above the seated figure and passing pedestrians can be seen two blocks down. To me, this signifies isolation, solitude, maybe loneliness in a city.

Image here

Further Reading, Colin O'Brien and Vivian Maier

Links: http://spitalfieldslife.com/2011/05/30/colin-obrien-photographer/
http://www.vivianmaier.com/

Both of these photographers are of the film and (mostly) black and white era of photography. As I grew up in this era (post war 50s and 60s) for me they have a nostalgic quality as well as being a social documentary.

Colin O’Brien has a particular resonance being British. Although he started making photographs a year before I was born, I can recognise a lot in his photographs. I too started making contact prints from a Kodak Brownie in a frame with a kit I was given as a present at the age of 14. (Remember Johnsons of Hendon?) Unfortunately it was to be another 40 years before I got into a proper darkroom and made enlargements from my negatives. I liked the everyday life patterns of his pictures, almost unremarkable subjects at the time but now as a historical record, they take on a new significance. There are similar subjects in our family albums, relatives and events of the past. Not as skilfully photographed but valuable as a record none the less.

I first heard a about Vivian Maier in a documentary film (probably on YouTube, from a link on the OCA Student Forums). Being American and photographing in New York and Chicago makes her subjects seem vaguely exotic. I’ve never been to either place in reality but we all have the Hollywood/Newsreel version of the United States in our heads. What Maier’s images show to me is that at the same time as Colin O’Brien was photographing in London, life was being lived by ordinary working people across the Atlantic in New York and Chicago. The Americans may have appeared more affluent but Maier’s photos also hint that life was not a bed of roses for everyone.

I think street photography is a marvellous genre but I don’t think could ever succeed at it. I can do the candid shots, either by taking pot luck with framing and looking away from the subject while pressing the shutter, or hiding away with a long lens. However, I think the best shots are those in which the subject has engaged with the photographer and you can see a response in their eyes. Either contempt, compliance or indifference. I would have trouble coping with the contempt. I’ve watched a videos of Bruce Guilden and Joel Meyerowitz working in New York. My skin is not that thick!

Course Reading “The Photograph” by Graham Clarke

I have finally finished reading this book. It has taken me nearly a year. I have only understood about half of the text. Written by an academic, for academics, the language is very obscure. I was constantly referring to a dictionary. For an author with such a large vocabulary, Clark’s constant use of the words “indeed” and “thus” was irritating. I learned much more from watching the excellent Genius of Photography series (my learning style is audio/visual/kinesthetic) and a lot of Clarke’s book became clear as a result.

It was not all bad though, in conjunction with the TV series, I learned a lot about the history of photography,  the development of the different genres and the way in which the medium has changed and is perceived in modern (today’s) society. What I didn’t understand was how so much indifferent photography can be accepted as art just because the so called artist or critic strings together a lot of big words and vague notions. I’m not saying the work has no validity, if the photographer believes in it, that’s its own validation. I just find it incredible that so many people seem to fall for it. If a photograph needs too much wordy explanation then perhaps the “artist” should become a writer or poet.

Cleverly, the whole gist of the book can be summarised by the penultimate sentence “…….the photograph is, in the end, open to endless meanings.” The flyleaf describes Clark’s book as a “clear and incisive account”. Not for me. While the book does communicate successfully in some areas, it obfuscates equally in others.

Reading a photograph – background notes from reading Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes

 
I decided to read this book as I have seen references to it in the OCA Student Forum and other texts on the course reading list in relation to the reading of a photograph. It was hard work. I'm not sure if it was because of the translation from French or, more likely, my lack of experience of the language and concepts of philosophy. Luckily, it is mercifully short.

What did I gather from the book? I made some notes.
The two ideas from the book most often quoted in connection to the reading of photographs are:
Studium: described variously as, the field of cultural interest, a kind of general enthusiastic commitment. The studium is passive.
Punctum: wound or impact, an unexpected flash, a sting, speck, hole, a little cut. Allows for the formation of a critical reading, it enables an active reading of the scene.

From Graham Clarke's book, The Photograph:
Clarke refers to Barthes's assertion that the photograph is a transparent envelope.
...misplaced assertion that the closer we look at a photograph, the more we see.
…when we look at a photograph we see something that no longer exists. The moment has passed.
...When Barthes declared that "photography evades us" and is "unclassifiable" , he alerted us to the paradox of something seemingly so obvious and yet so problematic.

I found this summary from Wikipedia:

Photography and Henriette Barthes
Throughout his career, Barthes had an interest in photography and its potential to communicate actual events. Many of his monthly myth articles in the 50s had attempted to show how a photographic image could represent implied meanings and thus be used by bourgeois culture to infer ‘naturalistic truths’. But he still considered the photograph to have a unique potential for presenting a completely real representation of the world. When his mother, Henriette Barthes, died in 1977 he began writing Camera Lucida as an attempt to explain the unique significance a picture of her as a child carried for him. Reflecting on the relationship between the obvious symbolic meaning of a photograph (which he called the studium) and that which is purely personal and dependent on the individual, that which ‘pierces the viewer’ (which he called the punctum), Barthes was troubled by the fact that such distinctions collapse when personal significance is communicated to others and can have its symbolic logic rationalized. Barthes found the solution to this fine line of personal meaning in the form of his mother’s picture. Barthes explained that a picture creates a falseness in the illusion of ‘what is’, where ‘what was’ would be a more accurate description. As had been made physical through Henriette Barthes's death, her childhood photograph is evidence of ‘what has ceased to be’. Instead of making reality solid, it reminds us of the world’s ever changing nature. Because of this there is something uniquely personal contained in the photograph of Barthes’s mother that cannot be removed from his subjective state: the recurrent feeling of loss experienced whenever he looks at it. As one of his final works before his death, Camera Lucida was both an on-going reflection on the complicated relations between subjectivity, meaning and cultural society as well as a touching dedication to his mother and description of the depth of his grief.

Now, having read the book and understood at least this much of it, I was pleased, on reflection to suddenly find a connection to a question in my mind that has been there ever since I read the chapter "How do we read a photograph?" in Graham Clarke's book.

The question was; if we view an seemingly ordinary photograph cold, i.e. with no information of the of the author or of his intent, is our reading of the image more, or less correct or valid than his? And is it right to colour our perceptions with our own experience, or hold back in our interpretation knowing that the photographer's experience and emotions may , in all probability , override our own if they become known to us?

By way of illustration, take a look at the following image:

You might say," interesting sky, reasonable composition, looks like a monument to the poet Tennyson, the empty seat could indicate absence (of the poet, long dead) and the railings, preservation or protection of his memory. If you are a meteorologist , you may interpret the cloud formations.

On the surface, a picture with some narrative given the limited information available. If we add a bit more information and confirm that this is indeed the Tennyson Memorial on the Down that bears his name at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight not much changes unless you equate the sense of place with Tennyson and his contemporary Julia Margaret Cameron. If I add the photographer's name; Richard Down, it will mean nothing because neither I, nor my work are known to any significant number of people.

But this image has an emotional significance (to me) beyond the obvious, so much so, that it has hung above my desk ever since. It is probably the first image that I have made where I can recall exactly how I was feeling at the time, why and how I chose the viewpoint I did . For you to share some of that emotion, I can tell you the date: 12th September 2001. The narrative now changes from what you can read from the photograph to what I now tell you about the circumstances of its making and why it means so much to me.

Still numb after the shock and horror of the previous day's events and not having slept well, I planned a walk from the hotel in Freshwater where we were staying, along the Downs to the Needles walking east to west.  As I walked past the monument, the sky ahead to the west was filled with the dark clouds of approaching rain. In my mind at that time I saw them as a metaphor for the terrorist threat approaching us from the west.  I happened to turn and looked at the sky to the east with these very different cloud formations as a backdrop to the monument. The scene was a distinct contrast and I was compelled to photograph it, not only to record it but to capture the sense of optimism for the future. That was my immediate response and I made the image with very little thought beyond that initial spark.

To me, this picture of a monument has itself become a monument to the events of that day in 2001. The empty seat marks the absence of the thousands who have died on that day and since, as a consequence of those events. That is my personal reading.

To return to my question, has your reading of the photograph changed having read my explanation?

From the highlighted section above, I’m not sure that I agree with Barthes. (assuming of course that I have understood his argument)  Having communicated my punctum, I don’t feel it has been lost (to me) or diminished. Subsequent personal events have reinforced the emotional attachment I have to this image, symbolising as it does, remembrance, absence and optimism.