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End of an era
You know how there are some icons in one's map of the world... the people who did something, so well, or so authoritatively they live apart from the sense of them being real people (e.g. Howard Hughes).
People who are so canonic, in the realm they inhabit one forgets they are real people.
And if they live long enough, one tends to forget they are alive.
That happened to me today. Henri Cartier-Bresson died yesterday.
But he didn't. For the same reasons he seemed gone before (his first published work was in 1933... he was six years younger than my grandmother, and they both reached the same age) he isn't, not really.
Because he achieved, at least in the world of photographers, and espcially in the world of people photographers, and photojournalists, the immortality which goes with being great, and something of a pioneer.
He came to the camera, when it was new... not new in the sense that it was a young art... because Dauguerre, and Fox Talbot gave the world useful methods, almost a century before his first pictures. No, he came to it when it had become portable, and fast.
Ansel Adams disdained the smaller formats, because they were too easy, not dear enough, so one could take a dozen, or three, without having to think about the film. One could be profligate.
Not Bresson. He preached non-obtrusion, hiding the camera; taking it out for, "the decisive moment." That decisive moment is still the essence of photojournalism, and of the good candid portraitist.
Because it is hard to get, and Bresson was so good at getting it. No fancy arrangements of lenses, and flashbulbs. A Lieca (the quietest camera made) and a normal lens... that was all he used.
And he is one of that small pantheon with whom those of us who fall in love with camera, fall for... emulate... practice small obsessions with.
I think about half the photographers I know have had a, "phase." For some it's Ansel Adams, or Stiechen (painterly, with nuances of Impressionism) or Helmut Newton, or Avedon. For photojournalists the list includes Eisenstadt, Arbus, Bourke-White, and Cartier-Bresson.
Because his work was exquisite. The man leaping the puddle on the Gare Saint-Lazaire, the boy with two bottles of wine, seemingly as large as he is. The still life of a crow; lit by a bay window... and all of that done with one lens.
It makes one think... all I need is to see like that, "one eye sees the world, the other makes the picture," as he put it.
He gave up the camera in 1975... going back to the painting he studied before he took up the instant gratification of catching the moment.
Which may be part of why he seemed so timeless as to give a rueful moment when I read the news... "He was still alive?"
And so he is.
TK
People who are so canonic, in the realm they inhabit one forgets they are real people.
And if they live long enough, one tends to forget they are alive.
That happened to me today. Henri Cartier-Bresson died yesterday.
But he didn't. For the same reasons he seemed gone before (his first published work was in 1933... he was six years younger than my grandmother, and they both reached the same age) he isn't, not really.
Because he achieved, at least in the world of photographers, and espcially in the world of people photographers, and photojournalists, the immortality which goes with being great, and something of a pioneer.
He came to the camera, when it was new... not new in the sense that it was a young art... because Dauguerre, and Fox Talbot gave the world useful methods, almost a century before his first pictures. No, he came to it when it had become portable, and fast.
Ansel Adams disdained the smaller formats, because they were too easy, not dear enough, so one could take a dozen, or three, without having to think about the film. One could be profligate.
Not Bresson. He preached non-obtrusion, hiding the camera; taking it out for, "the decisive moment." That decisive moment is still the essence of photojournalism, and of the good candid portraitist.
Because it is hard to get, and Bresson was so good at getting it. No fancy arrangements of lenses, and flashbulbs. A Lieca (the quietest camera made) and a normal lens... that was all he used.
And he is one of that small pantheon with whom those of us who fall in love with camera, fall for... emulate... practice small obsessions with.
I think about half the photographers I know have had a, "phase." For some it's Ansel Adams, or Stiechen (painterly, with nuances of Impressionism) or Helmut Newton, or Avedon. For photojournalists the list includes Eisenstadt, Arbus, Bourke-White, and Cartier-Bresson.
Because his work was exquisite. The man leaping the puddle on the Gare Saint-Lazaire, the boy with two bottles of wine, seemingly as large as he is. The still life of a crow; lit by a bay window... and all of that done with one lens.
It makes one think... all I need is to see like that, "one eye sees the world, the other makes the picture," as he put it.
He gave up the camera in 1975... going back to the painting he studied before he took up the instant gratification of catching the moment.
Which may be part of why he seemed so timeless as to give a rueful moment when I read the news... "He was still alive?"
And so he is.
TK