Henri Cartier-Bresson was a french photographer associated with the humanist movement. He was born in Seine Et Marne, France on August 22nd 1908. He was the oldest of 5 children and the son of a wealthy textiles manufacturer.

He started off taking photos on a Kodak Brownie camera while on holidays with his family. He then went on to experiment with a 3×4 Inch view camera.

in 1929, He met an american by the name of harry Crosby, who gifted Cartier with his first camera. The two lived together as Friends and frequently took photos of their home in le moulin de solei. in 1931, Crosby committed suicide.

Cartier then went on to live in Africa before returning to France where he purchased a Leica camera with a 50mm lens. He decided to take to street photography and painted all shiny parts of the camera black in order to remain anonymous.

Key Images

Here are some key images from Cartiers work

Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare

Hyeres, France, 1932

Ireland-1952

France 1972

Analysis

I have chosen the “Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare due to its very intriguing nature. The photo has been taken after heavy rain and the rain is perfectly reflecting the running man and his surroundings, making it look like he is floating. The photo has been taken in natural lighting during the day .

The image is quite bright  due to the reflective puddle and the sky. The man pictured is most likely rushing for the train, hinted at by the blur.

BIOGRAPHY 

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer who’s photographs helped develop photojournalism as an art form. He was born August 22, 1908. As a pioneer in photojournalism he wandered around the world with his camera and became buried in his environments.  He was educated in Paris and he developed an early love of literature and the arts. He then went onto further education to Cambridge University to further himself in art and literature courses. He attended the army, then traveled to Africa to hunt but he eventually became board of this. But Africa brought on a different interest of photography. Bresson then moved back to Paris and continued his path down photography and he believed that all edits shout be done when the image is made. He used small cameras as they were easier to handle. Henri Cartier-Bresson is considered one of the major artists of the 20th century.

MOODBOARD

This moodboard is presenting images by Bresson with a mixture of emotions and moods through out it. They are also a handful of my favourite images by him as they speak loudly to the viewer and the way he has photographed the subject it vet interesting and it makes you think and wonder why he has done it like that.

IMAGE ANALYSIS

EMOTIONAL RESPONSE;

When I initially looked at this image I felt sadness because of the conditions the children where in. But I looked at it over and over again to understand the image and then there was a mixture of emotions, such as happiness because the children are smiling and are having fun with each other and are creating their own fun despite their surroundings. A sense of confusion to why they where in such rough conditions and what had happened there.

TECHNICAL;

He has used the natural lighting in this image to help him get the real effect, along with maybe using a wide lens (portrait lens) so he could get more of the background into the photo to create a deeper depth of field. The image looks slightly over exposed so he may have used a slower shutter speed to let more light into the image.

VISUAL;

There are scatters of children behind a wall that has a cut out in it. The children are together or in smaller groups playing along with each other all looking happy. There is rubble on the floor which suggests that their homes may have been destroyed through a natural disaster. The children are dressed in poor clothing. The child at the front of the image is injured which suggests conflict and pain within this environment.

CONCEPT;

I believe the reasoning behind this image is that Bresson wanted to show everyone what other parts of the world were like and to show how their is positive feelings still running through strong despite to pain they are going through.

BRESSON’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE MAGNUM

The magnum is an international photographic cooperative owned by photographers such as Bresson. It was set up to share human quality and the cursorily of what was happening around the world. Bresson’s relationship with the magnum was that he was the co-founder if it, his ideas and images with so many different stories behind them to be shown to the public eye to help them understand different situations around the world.

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON & TONY RAY-JONES

Tony Ray-Jones

The emotional response I get from this photo is hopelessness because they are all crowed under small umbrellas and they’re sitting down sluggishly looking hopeless.  In this photo there are multiple people, there are 5 people in the front of the photo which are the main subjects of this image. Three of them are sat down huddling under one umbrella, to the left of the photo there is an older women standing with a plastic bag over her head along with her holding an umbrella over herself. It looks like they are near a beach due to the sand looking floor at the bottom of the photo. They have cups and glasses to the left of them as well. Jones was an English photographer and a husband of a princess. He wanted to capture the spirit and mentality of the English, their habits and their way of life. This image is showing what the English women do together and the weather of the image adds to the British feel of it.

Bresson and Jones take similar photos with similar meaning as they photograph people doing their everyday tasks. This photo is showing a group of people sat on a bank looking at the view. As Bresson traveled the world this could be showing a way another culture lives in the world and educating people.

Emotional response

I like this image because It looks like a photograph that would have an interesting story or meaning behind it. I feel this way due to the almost sinister feel to the image. Lots of things help to create this atmosphere in the image, like for example how the image is quite dark and also how the man in the image is presented. His pose makes me feel that he may be quite evil, or thinking of something dark.

Visual

This image is really interesting visually too due to lots of aspects. Firstly, the long depth of field means that there is a lot going on in the photo, and it also means there is a lot of detail to notice, which means you are engaged for longer. The lighting also makes this photo successful as it is dark and adds to the mysterious feel of the photo, which also makes the figure look even scarier.

Context

The man in this portrait was Alfried Krupp. He was known for using slave labour to make weapons for the Nazis. Krupp contacted Newman for a portrait but later found out he was Jewish, he no longer wanted Newman  to take his photo. Newman insisted that he take the portraits, and showed Krupp his portfolio of images. After seeing his work, Krupp agreed to let Newman take the images. They both then went to one of Krupp’s factories, where Newman made sure to make Krupp look as evil as he possibly could. When Krupp saw the image he was very angry, and Newman said that as a Jew it was his “own little moment of revenge”.

concept

When I first saw this image, I got the sense that the man being photographed looked quite evil just by the techniques used and without knowing any context. Perhaps Newman was trying to create an underlying concept of trusting your initial feelings about things. I think this because Newman made sure he made Krupp looked sinister so we would all get a gut feeling that something wasn’t right about him, and when finding out the context it turned out to be correct.

As my first experimentation with portraiture didn’t produce many successful outcome I decided to do a 2nd photo shoot in order to get some better photographs. For this photo shoot I plan on taking pictures of my family all out together at a bonfire. I though this would be a good idea as It would be very interesting to capture a family environment dynamic in my images, rather than taking more photographs of people in work environments.

Contact sheet

My most successful outcomes

Analysing my images

Visually, this image is very successful for various reasons. Firstly, both the people are centered in the frame and they’re also both smiling while slightly engaging with the camera. Although they’re not fully looking at the camera, I think the image is still successful as it turned out to be a more candid shot. Another reason why this image is visually pleasing, is because of the emotion in the portrait. It is clear to see that they are both very happy, and their body language shows that they must be very fond of each other.

The technical elements of this image also helped to make It successful. This image was taken with a shutter speed of 1/100 meaning that it wasn’t extremely slow, but still allowing a good enough amount of exposure time for the image not to turn out very dark. I also used flash to take this image as it was dark outside, and I also set the white balance to flash so that the colouring would be accurate. I also used an f/5.6 so that the photo had a shallow depth of field, as I dint want the background to be too distracting.
Visually, I really like this image. In the frame you can see a male and a female with a child on her shoulders. I think that is a successful outcome as all three subjects are engaging well with the camera, and they are all well centered in the frame.

The technical side of the image was a bit more challenging for me as it was difficult to get good quality pictures in the dark while shooting manually. The ISO of this image was quite high, and the shutter speed was quite quick, around 1/250, but i had to be careful not to have it to quick as it would make my image turn out very overexposed. I also made sure to use flash, and to set the white balance to the flash setting also so that colours could be photographed as accurately as possible.

Evaluation

Overall I think this photoshoot was for more successful compared to my last one. This time I made sure to direct people more in order to capture the images I wanted, instead of just photographing them naturally. This meant that I had more images where the models were interacting with the camera, making the photographs more successful. I also think that the quality of the images were far better too. Although at the beginning it was very hard to shoot good quality images in the darkness while using manual settings, through trial and error I was able to find suitable settings to get me good quality images. I made sure to use a flash, and a fairly quick shutter speed of around 1/250, making sure that it wasn’t much slower or quicker so my images wouldn’t be blurry or underexposed, I also had my aperture set at around f/5 as I didn’t wanted to get a fairly long depth of field so that the surrounding environment could be seen in order to give the photos a bit more character and context, as I think that’s what truly makes an image appealing and interesting. However, next time I will experiment using a higher aperture as I think some images would also look nice with a shallow depth of field as it would mean that there would be more focus on the people as they would be the main focus of the photograph.