Henri Cartier-Bresson at Fondation Henri Cartier Bresson, Paris

Whilst at the Harry Callahan exhibition, I also took the opportunity to look at some of the photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson. There were handful displayed on the top floor of the FHCB building and I also watched a 45 minute video of Henri Cartier-Bresson talking about his photography and his photographs. I also noted a number of his observations on photography from one of his books on display. Interestingly, he seemed to approach photography in a totally different way to Harry Callahan.

• Rather than concentrate on a few types of photograph, Bresson seemed to have produced photos of so many different subjects and types:-

- Portraits of famous people
- Candid street photography
- War and press photography

- Fine art photography and photography books

• People are frequently the visual point of interest in his photographs. He finds human interest in ways that intrigue the viewer - a fat man in a bowler hat walking through a playground of children - a puddle of perfectly still water about to be disturbed by the foot of a pedestrian - a group of children playing in what appears to be a damaged building, one of whom is on crutches implying some awful previous event. His photographs of street scenes convey the scene in terms of the buildings and passageways in between, but typically this is enlivened by a running child or figure in a patch of sunlight.
• In the film, a woman whose portrait he had taken described how he held her in conversation. He waited until she was making a point when he suddenly took the photo which became the portrait. It was noticeable in the film that the portraits were taken when the subject was actively talking or gesticulating. Also the individuals were in their normal surroundings, not in a studio or set. This is totally unlike the Irving Penn portraits where most were in studio surroundings. For Bresson it seemed that the photographers purpose was to catch the subject's vitality and manner. For Penn it seemed that the photographer wanted to emphasize the persons physical peculiarities in a more static pose.

He is portrayed in the Thames and Hudson book "Henri Cartier - Bresson" as being a man of few words, but I found his comments in the film on the "decisive moment" and other matters as memorable. He seems to be the ultimate "practitioner" of photography, whereas Harry Callahan was both practitioner and theoretician.

I noted a few of Bresson's views paraphrased from the introduction to his book "The choice of Henri Cartier-Bresson":-

• Taking a photo - all the faculties converge in the face of fleeting reality.
• The place and rank of photography as an art form is of no concern. This is purely academic.
• He is amused by the insatiable craving for sharpness of images.