About

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French artist and humanist photographer who was considered a master of candid photography. He was born on 22nd August 1908 and would eventually pass away on the 3rd of August 2004. He pioneered the genre of street photography, genre of photography that records everyday life in a public place, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment.

Cartier-Bresson was also one of the founding members of Magnum Photos in 1947, an international photographic cooperative owned by its photographer-members, with offices in New York City, Paris, London and Tokyo.

The decisive moment

In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book ‘Images à la sauvette’, whose English-language edition was titled ‘The Decisive Moment’, even though the exact translation of the French title is ‘images on the sly‘ or ‘hastily taken images’.

The decisive moment included a portfolio of 126 of Cartier-Bresson’s photos from the East and West. The book’s cover was drawn by Henri Matisse, a French visual artist.

For his 4,500 word philosophical preface, Cartier-Bresson said “There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment”. He applied this to his photographic style too, even saying “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression”.

The photo Rue Mouffetard, Paris, taken in 1954, has since become a classic example of Cartier-Bresson’s ability to capture a decisive moment. He held his first exhibition in France at the Pavillon de Marsan in 1955.

Popular quotes from Henri Cartier-Bresson

• “Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.”
• “Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing a meditation.”
• “I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to ‘trap’ life – to preserve life in the act of living. Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.”
• “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition in a fraction of a second the significance of an event, as well as the precise organization the forms that give that event its proper expression.”
• “A photograph is neither taken or seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.” 
• “Photography is, for me, a spontaneous impulse coming from an ever attentive eye which captures the moment and its eternity.”

His photos

Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.

Nostalgia is a word that comes from Greek and means a sentimental yearning for the past. It can evoke feelings of pleasure with occasional notes of sadness. Nostalgia can be triggered by many things, such as music, movies, places, or people. Nostalgia can have positive effects on mood, social connectedness, self-esteem, and meaning in life.

My nostalgic mood bored is based on my child hood growing up in jersey and the things i enjoyed and the events i used to go to every year, like Gorey fete and Liberation Day.

The work in this exciting exhibition recreates the strange hold that childhood spaces have on our adult memories, all centred around the Jersey childhood mecca of old Fort Regent. Lakeman is a photographer who has nurtured an obsessive interest in ‘the Fort’, and has spent his adult life revisiting weird dreams of this iconic building and its heyday in the early 1990s.

This exhibition includes a lot of bright colours, I think when you’re young everything seems more colourful, which the AI that created these images portrayed very well. I think that when people think of their childhoods, it seems a lot more drastically fun than it would have been in reality. Lakeman was describing one of the images in the exhibition, which includes a snake slide, he said that from his memory, the snake slide was, in appearance, a lot more fun than it actually was. I think a lot of people do this subconsciously, they want things to be more fun than they possibly could have been. In a place like Jersey, where there isn’t much to do for young people, a lot of people who grew up while the fort was a leisure centre may make it more colourful or fun in their imaginations than it was. 

Will Lakeman used his childhood memories of the Fort to create the exhibition. The way the exhibition was structured was very interesting, it was separated into different sections to show the different sections of the leisure centre that were there, each one having a scent diffuser and audio track to make the area seem real, for example the funfair had a diffuser to give a faint smell of popcorn and low noises from the funfair and the “pool” area had a faint smell of chlorine and low water noises. This makes a lot of people who grew up when it was that way feel that they’re there again.  

A lot of AI image generators create very colourful images, in dreams all your senses are heighten, especially your sight, everything seems brighter in light and colour.  Lakeman described one of his experiences at the pool where he hadn’t eaten, and all the colours became more colourful, the yellow tones from the sun increasing and seeing squares all around the area, he created the experience into an image with AI. 

“To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It’s a way of life”

Henri Cartier-Besson

WHO IS HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON:

Bresson developed a strong fascination with painting early on, and particularly with Surrealism. This lead to his passion for photography. He was also a photo journalist where he documented some very famous events, such as Gandhi’s funeral, china and even the liberation of Paris. His influence was through surrealism, and decided to make a photobook called “The Decisive Moment” which would define photography itself and be one of his most famous projects.

His photobook, ‘The Decisive Moment‘, is one of the most famous of its kind and explored his mastery of candid street photography.

The photographic master Henri Cartier-Bresson made some key observations about photography, translated as “the decisive moment” which is often (incorrectly) characterized as: “capturing an event that is ephemeral and spontaneous, where the image represents the essence of the event itself.

LINK: https://petapixel.com/the-decisive-moment/

The book ‘The decisive moment’ expresses Bresson beliefs about the ‘decisive moment’ there is in every photograph a individual takes.

AWARDS HE BRESSON HAS RECIEVED:

• 1986 Novecento Premio
• 1981 Grand Prix National de la Photographie
• 1975 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie
• 1975 Culture Prize
• 1964 Overseas Press Club of America Award
• 1960 Overseas Press Club of America Award
• 1959 Prix de la Société Française de Photographie
• 1954 Overseas Press Club of America Award
• 1953 A.S.M.P. Award
• 1948 Overseas Press Club of America Award

PHOTO ANALYSIS:

Cartier-Bresson uses photography to express news and document what is going on in the world. In this particular image you are able to see a young girl performing child labour and significantly struggling, even with the help of a young boy. However due to the girl being the main focus, as she is spread across the image, challenging the rule of thirds Cartier-Bresson is clearly documenting the force of child labour, especially the female sex.

Emotional Response:

This image shows the hardship of the Chinese Civil War and how it affected the labour that children went through. In this image you see a young girl is an awkward and painful position trying to drag some produce, this creates a melancholy picture and creates sympathy.

Visual – what we can see in the image

In the image there is a young girl carrying a load of products, she is across the whole landscape, as she is the main focus of the image. She has a rope across her shoulder which seems to cause her pain, this image could also be a metaphor for the children having ‘the weight of the world’ on her shoulders as the kids now how to provide for the families.

Contextual – who, when, where etc.. the story, background, impact

In November 1948, the great photographer went to shoot ‘the last days of Beijing’. He returned to China in 1958 to capture the results of the Maoist revolution. Images from both visits are brought together for the first time in an exhibition in Paris.

LINKS:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2020/jan/09/henri-cartier-bresson-china-breaking-free-of-its-past-in-pictures

https://www.whitefungus.com/henri-cartier-bresson-almost-goes-back-china

ST MALO PHOTOSHOOT:

I intend to use Cartier-Bresson work as inspiration for my St. Malo photoshoot. In his street photography he seems to have a variation between close-ups (where the individual knows the picture is being taken) and some long distance (where the individual could be unaware). In my photoshoot I will take long distance shots, and try and capture small intimate moments of people.

The exhibition ‘PLAYTIME’ presents images from Lakeman’s childhood memories from Fort Regent Leisure Centre. Will has dedicated the exhibition to his late brother Matthew, the brothers used to spend most of their time up at the Fort as Will states that “those were the best of times for us.” The exhibition displays a range of images of the fort made from artificial intelligence (A.I) which are an attempt to recreate Will’s childhood memories from his point of view.

Lakeman wanted to recrate his childhood memories of Fort Regent through a series of images. Will “didn’t care if the images he created weren’t correct/ didn’t fit other peoples memories of the Fort because he wanted to portray how he remembers the fort. The images link back to the theme of nostalgia as it will bring back many old memories from the ‘good ol’ days’ for older generations. It will also allow them to explore whether their memories of the fort were different to Wills as the A.I images may not match what they remember. The exhibition made me feel nostalgic in a different way, as there were a variety of images such as ones that I could relate to as it’s how I remembered the Fort and ones that I’ve been told stories about by the older generations. When looking at the variety of different images, the images that made me feel a strong sense of nostalgia were the ones that showed the Fort how I remembered it; Such as ‘Rampart Angles’ which showed the iconic blue flooring along the upper floor of Fort Regent which was bordered with a red railing. It brought back my own childhood memories, from when I would run along there when playing with my friends.

Will had different sections of his exhibition, In one of the sections, there were a series of images displayed on a light board. This cause the images to glow, exaggerating the vivid colours in he image which are exactly how Will remembers the memories.

Throughout the exhibition, there were three different scents that Will thought related to each section exhibition. For example there was a swimming pool scent where Lakeman has displayed his photos showing his childhood memories from the swimming pool. Will had also made a custom sound scape to fit the exhibition which made it unique and made me feel like I was able to visualise what Will’s memories looked like.

Will used A.I to create most of the images seen at the exhibition, using tools such as the ‘text-to-image’ generators. Will used this tool to generate images that linked back to his memories which have a unique outcome.

My thoughts:

I enjoyed the exhibition because it was different to other exhibitions as it had multiple aspects such as the soundtrack, scents, arcade game, darkened room with lightboxes. I found the different elements of the exhibition made it more interesting and interactive in a way as you could really try and visualise what Will was trying to show. The exhibition brought back some of my childhood memories and showed me what the Fort used to be like, as I have heard stories about it from older generations.

the images were an attempt to recreate his childhood memories of Fort Regent.

“I have tried to picture things not as they were, but in the strange ways they appear in dreams and hallucinations.” he said he remembers it intensely but owning just a handful of photographs.

As he has autism, he states how much it effects the love and passion he has for Fort Reagent. he said many autistic people have a certain love for specific things, like birds or trains but his is for Fort Regent.

Alongside photography he wanted to experiment with the new potential offered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. he wanted to see if he could visualise concepts from just outside reality – by creating collages from photographs and using them as a basis for the Al to respond to. he said There was a lot of trial and error but eventually he made something arguably closer to how he remembers it.

What i like of what he said that some memories are like stories, “some explode in intense fragments of colour and sensation.” “In my mind the Fort can be a place that is alive with the flashing lights of the funfair, the neon hum of video game arcades, cascading fountains of light and water.” this descriptive description shows the longing he has for the past. shows the nostalgia of the place fort reagent. this exhibition is a response to the nostalgia he has for his childhood. this is what makes other people viewing his work nostalgic is well as it forces a person to think on their past. how it makes me feel is not only nostalgic for my own past , but i try to link my childhood with the images, bringing positive memories.

What I like most about his images is how they make me feel uncomfortable but intrigued. every landscape is surreal and out worldly yet it has a sense of comfort in them. they are great representations of dreams as they show that anything is possible. I like how some images are just slightly distorted but you can still tell what the image is of, like with the above image where the only thing that makes the image look abstract is the sky and water, but in others, like the photograph next to it, it is an image representing something, but it’s unclear what that something is. all the shapes and colour make sense but their rearrangement confuses. that’s the images I find most fascinating, the ones that need the viewer to write their own story to them.

As he used AI to produce these images, he said haw over the 2 to 3 years of working on them, AI has grown massively and it threatens to have huge implications for art, culture and even what we understand as the truth of reality.

he said AI is appropriate for what he is trying to do, which is to recreate the way his mind jumbles things together to create memories. he said autism affects his imagination where he cant come up with anything new, but can come up with creative combinations of things seen before. looking at an AI image he has to question how much is reflecting in it of his past and how he remembers it.

This image above is very interesting to me as although there are some distorted shapes to guide you of what’s happening, it is entirely up to the viewer to make a judgement of the scene. different people will see this image as different scenes. as I spoke to my friend he said he saw a merry go round ride, and showed me why he thinks that, suggesting that some of the shapes represent horses and people. I found that interesting as I saw something different, I saw a restaurant on a late night, where people are dinning in, being sat by the tables. This concept is interesting because the image is so abstract that it is unclear what it shows, giving the viewer full freedom of deciding what it could be. this concept links to dreams in general because many might have a basic idea of what they saw in the dream or what they dreamed about, but can’t fully picture it. it feels like a blurred and distant memory, and although the concept of what the dream was about is there, many cant see it in detail. “When you revisit an old memory it isn’t important for everything to make sense.” this quote relates to this image and explains quite why it looks so abstract.

Artist & photographer Will Lakeman said of the upcoming exhibition “I’m really excited for people to see this show, which I now realise I’ve been trying to make for most of my adult life. I have a really intense interest in a specific era of Fort Regent’s history – the funfair and swimming pool – but I have hardly any photos of myself there. I had to try and recreate my memories, and the more I tried the stranger the results became. The show involves photographs, reconstructions made with Artificial Intelligence, a soundscape, found objects and even some smells. Although it’s rooted in “the Fort” I tried to capture something universal in the experience of being a child, beyond excited to go to the leisure centre. I hope it says something to everybody.‘

The exhibition ‘PLAYTIME’ created by Lakeman is the recreation of the strange hold that childhood spaces have on our adult memories. This specific exhibition is centred around his childhood memories of fort regent.

Will Lakeman: ‘Through my work I try and communicate something of the weird, vivid sensations of my dreams and nightmares. I dream inside a world of intense colour and strange symbolism, but I also daydream in my waking hours as I drift around the place. I also experience synaesthetic hallucinations where my sensed become confused.’

Lakeman is a photographer who has nurtured an obsessive interest in ‘the Fort’, and has spent his adult life revisiting weird dreams of this iconic building and its heyday in the early 1990s.

The reason that this exhibition relates to the project of Nostalgia is because it invites the question of whether things are really as we remember or, as the term suggests, whether we cut out any negative aspects of the memory. Additionally, the fragmented and distorted nature of the AI pieces relates to the same imagery of our memories and dreams, where everything is displaced and misshapen.

Lakeman had also incorporated aspects of sound and smell to the exhibition to attempt to evoke the universal memories in any visitor’s inner child; the sharp smell of chlorine that immediately invites rich memories of the warm haze that accompanied it, the sound of children screaming and laughing in delight, even the comforting scent of buttered popcorn. As a very sensory-oriented person, Lakeman feels that this was the best way to recreate his memories as an experience that could be relived by any visitor.

Full Press HERE.

LAKEMAN WORK/EXHIBITION:

Lakeman’s images generated by AI connote a fantasy world, a fantasia. The use of his creativity and creating this illusion almost gives an escapism of reality. Audience that have experienced any of their childhood in fort regent would see this hyperbole fantasy that Lakeman has created. I overall really enjoy Lakeman’s AI generated photography as each image is designed to his own memories and the way and individual remembers their memories, each photograph is unique. It is interesting to see how he was able to transform a old and rather empty space and fill it with impossibly magical landscapes and fantasy imaginings.

WHAT IS NOSTALIGIA?

Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. Nostalgia, as an abstract concept, can be described as something different to each individual, but the dictionary definition states that it is first a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition and second the state of being homesick.

HOW CAN NOSTALIGIA BE SUBVERTED?

What we know as feeling nostalgic, a warm positive feeling can also reflect which can induce sadness if you’re yearning for the past, and upset that the times you’re thinking of no longer exist, this can cause an individual to take it as an opportunity to reimagine or conceal. By recollecting these positive memories this could lead an individual to erase the negative parts for the memory in order to align with the stereotypical happy memories of the past.

WHAT CAN TRIGGER NOSTALGIA?

• FOOD
• FAMILY AND FREINDS
• PHOTOS
• SCENT
• MUSIC
• PLACES
• MEDIA
• MOVIES/TV COMMERCIALS

NOSTALGIA IN PHOTOGRAPHY

Becoming an artist/photographer you are able to interpret art in your own way, this is why each individual artwork has a unique style to each artistic. Since nostalgia is such an abstract topic artists are able to be inspired by anything, the positive or the negative, and express it in a way that is distinctive to one-self.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French artist and street photographer, known for his heavily popularised concept of “the decisive moment” within photography. It refers to capturing a spontaneous event in a photograph; this event being what gives the image its character as a piece. This ‘event’ could be anything, from a plane flying over a house in an image to cyclists riding through the streets of Hyères, France in one of Bresson’s most famous photographs, aptly titled “Man cycles down street.”

The decisive moment brings an element of action to an image – providing it with a narrative that it wouldn’t have otherwise as a static shot of a staircase on an empty street.

This is reflected in some of my own images, such as this one above. The moving car on the road adds action to the composition and acts as a focal point, further drawing in a viewer’s attention. With this being said, I hope to use Bresson’s style as a key inspiration for when we go to St. Malo.

These photographs were taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who frequently visited St. Malo for his photography. I plan to take inspiration from his strong compositions of geometric shapes to use in my own images.

William Klein was a street photographer who preferred to get up close to his subjects, often in crowds in busy streets. I want to play around with monochrome photographs, and imitate the strong contrasts featured in Klein’s work.

I find both of these artists interesting and I plan to use both of their styles in my own images on this trip. The geometric shapes featured across the battlements and archways of St. Malo should make for very unique pieces, and I think that the people around the town could make for some interesting portraits too.