Comparing Street Photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and Bruce Gilden
“I’m known for taking pictures very close, and the older I get, the closer I get”- Bruce Gilden
Bruce Gilden – Mini Biography
Gilden is well known for his unique portraiture style. Gilden was born in 1946 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, he went on to study at Pennsylvania State University but then later dropped out after finding it too boring. He then later went onto dabbling into being an actor and then settled on the idea of becoming a photographer after buying a camera. Bruce Gilden attended some lessons on Photography, however he is generally considered a self-taught Photographer.
Comparing Henri Cartier-Bresson and Bruce Gilden
Earlier Inclinations
Both Bruce Gilden’s and Cartier-Bresson’s earlier inclinations toward painting and acting influenced their later careers in Photography. After seeing Three Boys at Lake Tanganiyka (c. 1929) by Hungarian Photographer Martin Munkacsi, Cartier-Bresson was inspired to pursue photography with a seriousness that had been absent in his previous dabbling with the medium. He remembered the experience, saying, “I suddenly understood that photography can fix eternity in a moment. ” Bruce Gilden began his photography career as a bored ‘college dropout’ who was lacking inspiration after leaving University. He was fascinated with people on the street and the idea of visual spontaneity, Gilden turned to a career in photography.
Magnum Photos
Along with other influential Photographers, Henri Cartier-Bresson founded the Magnum Photo Cooperative in 1947. The agency helped protect the interests of the photographers, the rightful owners of their negatives and all reproduction rights. The founding members of Magnum divided and travelled the world with Cartier-Bresson documenting Asia. Bruce Gilden later became a member of Magnum Photos in 1998.
Tom Hunter is a renowned British Photographer who is currently based in East London. Hunter was born in Dorset in 1965. In 1980 when he was 15 years old, he left school and began to work on a farm for a year and later moved onto work for the Forestry Commission in Dorset. In 1986 Tom Hunter moved to Hackney and began work as a Tree Surgeon. 4 years later in 1990, he attended A-Level Photography evening classes at Kingsway College in London.
Hunter is best known for his re-staging of historical tableaux portraits and making them more contemporary and fitting his narratives. Below is an example of this. Tom Hunter draws inspiration from Victorian paintings and Dutch Renaissance and Pre-Raphaelite master painters. His re-creation of the Ophelia painting shows a young girl on her walk home coming back from a rave and falling into a slippery canal area in an desolate industrialized area.The Walk Home – Tom Hunter
Ophelia 1851-2 Sir John Everett Millais
Unheralded Stories
Unheralded Stories by Tom Hunter is a series of photographs which depict the folklore and myths that were built up around his community and surroundings in Hackney over the past twenty-five years. The photographs reference historical tableaux paintings to create striking mythical images which celebrate life by transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. There are 10 photos in this series, these are the ones I am drawn to the most.
In Anchor and Hope, 2009. It is clear to see the reference from Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World, 1948 it depicts a memory of pitched battles with the council as squatters organized a self-supporting community in a Clapton estate bordering Springfield Park.
Christina’s World , Andrew Wyeth, 1938
Tom Hunter – Anchor and HopeTom Hunter – Hackney CutTom Hunter – Death of Coltelli
Wyeth was born 1917 and was a visual artist as well as a realist painter who worked predominantly in a regionalist style and was most well known as one of the best US artists of the middle 20th century.
He was home- tutored due to his frail health which he had inherited from his father. Due to his father also being home schooled at a young age, they both lived a sheltered life and one that was ” obsessively focused”. Wyeth has been known to tell people about how he felt as if his father kept him in jail and “he kept me to to himself in my own world”. While being ‘trapped’ at home he read a lot of poetry and appreciated the writings of Robert Frost. His knowledge of poetry and his love for music and movies inspired him and ended up heightening his artistic sensitivity.
At the age of twenty he was noticed for his paintings and made his first one-man exhibition of watercolors at the Macbeth Gallery in New York City. In his paintings he limited color range which made his paintings a lot “drier” and therefore had a different style from his fathers work. The exhibition was sold out. A couple of years after his first exhibition he was known as a classified realist painter (1965) and he thought of himself as an abstractionist.
He worked predominately in a regionalist style, and in his art his favorite subjects were land and people around him.
Analysation picture
Context
This image called ‘ Christina’s world’ is a 1948 painting, painted by Andrew Wyeth. It is a realist style painting, depicting a woman lying on the ground in a treeless field looking at a barn in the distance. The women in the painting has been known to suffer Charcot- Marie- Tooth disease which inspired Wyeth to take the image of her crawling across the field to the old barn house as it would show desperation.
Emotional response
When first looking at this image i firstly spotted the crawling lady on the bare floor looking away from the camera. This first sight immediately drew me in due to the position the lady is in. The way her arms are placed make it seem as if she crawling towards something, as well as the direction her head is at supporting this as she is looking up towards something in the distance. The location of the place this lady is in adds a sense of loneliness as we can see there is no one around and the barn in the distance also helps to add a sense of hope. We can not see any other buildings around which makes us wonder how long the lady has been walking for which has been done to make us feel sorry for her. The fact that it looks as if she’s crawling also makes us think theirs a chance she could have injured herself, again making us feel sorry for her.
Visual response
This image is very interesting to the eye due to how simple the picture is. The the plain scenery helps to add to the atmosphere of loneliness and desperation.
The lady is dressed in a plain pale pink dress which has been seen to be a little worn out due to the dirt under her skirt, suggesting that she has pulled herself across the muddy floor.
Technical response
When looking at the image, i see that there is texture shown due to the bare ground being painted different colors adding layers to the image. This texture is showing that this floor has not been used in a while, adding to the loneliness. There is a full depth of field used in this image which means we can see the whole image and take in all the surroundings.
A tableau vivant (often shortened to tableau, plural: tableaux vivants), French for ‘living picture’, is a static scene containing one or more actors or models. They are stationary and silent, usually in costume, carefully posed, with props and/or scenery, and may be theatrically lit. It thus combines aspects of theatre and the visual arts.Staged reality is a main aspect of tableaux vivant in which the photographer captures an artificially constructed scene.
Tom Hunter
Tom Hunter (born 1965) is a London-based British artist working in photography and film. His photographs often reference and re imagine classical paintings. He studied at the London College of Printing, and was the first photographer to have a one-man show at the National Gallery of London.
He worked alongside friends, neighbours and family to recreate others work but in a much more modern way. For instance the picture on the left is not this own work it is in fact Johannes Vermeer artwork which entails a young girl standing by a window reading a love letter from her man who is far away, possibly at war. Hunter has recreated Vermeer’s work but with a modern update, the women isn’t holding a love letter she is holding an eviction notice. Tom has spent time with the people he takes pictures, for instance he lived on the same tower block as his women, he knew the problem she was going through as he was also being evicted. Even though the to photos are very similar, there are underlying differences, for instance the open window on the left and the light flooding through has connotations of hope and freedom as she is happy her lover is still alive, whereas on the right the window is closed this has connotations of being trapped with no hope for the future, now she is homeless with a baby. As well as that on the left there is a bowl of fruits yet on the right there is a baby, this is symbolic of the fact that the women on the right has a lot more to lose then the women on the left, fruits can be eaten but a baby can’t just be thrown away, it needs love and care and a roof over its head. There is a clear rule of thirds in this photo, this is symbolic of how the women on the left has a structured path in life, its all going in one direction, she can see her path clearly because soon the war will be over and she can marry the man she is in love with. Whereas the women on the right, her rule of thirds represents a sense of being trapped, she can’t escape this harsh cycle of council housing, she is stuck in this rule of thirds layout.
Recreation
The Raft of the Medusa Painting by Théodore Géricault
This painting was fairly hard to recreate considering it is located on a raft at sea and there are lots of people involved in the photo. We tried to modernize the photo as much as possible for instance we made sure ‘the north face jacket’ which was acting as a flag was clear too see, as the brands represent how society nowadays is materialist and how we need the best of the best not just unbranded, our whole world revolves around money and out doing each other. We were all at different levels in order to create a pyramid shape, a pyramid having connotations of strength, power and sturdiness. As well that it represents society and how those at the top thrive and survive but those ones at the bottom struggle and fail.
Tom Walker
I recreated this photo in school near the window by art. I had to select the window on Photoshop and decrease the exposure as the light coming through was over-exposed and too bright. I also increased the contrast to add depth and emphasis the light outside against the darkness inside. This symbolizes how the girl in the Tom Walker photo was exposed to the light and sunny world but under the surface the world was creating more troubles for her then happiness and the weather can’t change the fact that she is a single mum without a home. It’s as if the world is trying to sugarcoat all her worries with clear skies, but she can’t see its true beauty, the only thing she can see is the eviction letter she is holding.
The Walk Home – Tom Hunter
Christina’s World , Andrew Wyeth, 1938
Tom Hunter – Hackney Cut
Tom Hunter – Death of Coltelli
