Who is he?

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French artist and humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment. Cartier-Bresson was one of the founding members of Magnum Photos

What is the concept of the decisive moment?

The concept of the decisive moment implies that in the constant flow of events, there are moments in which the arrangement of everything within the frame is perfect. These moments are always spontaneous, so a photographer must be ready to click right away.

– Line
– Shape & Form
– Pattern
– Tone
– Colour
– Texture
– Space

Cartier used many quotes to relate within his work and some of them are..

“It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart and head.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson
“To photograph: it is to put on the same line of sight the head, the eye and the heart.” ― Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.” ― Henri Cartier-Bresson
“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.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson

He was a photographer in the 90s and used a Leica 35 mm rangefinder cameras, I will be analysing his photograph’s.

What is it and how can you achive this?

The decisive photo is the moment of perfect position and how you use angles, shapes , lines etc to form the way your photo is being taken. its a spilt second of moment and can be done perfect in a click of a button with the right lay out and how you are trying to style it. Henri was the master of photography, Henri started off with art and drawings first but then turned to photography. He was a member of magnum photo group which is where he took cannon photographs which means the absence of posing – the person must be unaware for the photo to be candied. The point of the decisive moment and candied photos is that you can really feel the intellectual pleasure and seeing and understating what you can se and how you can feel it as well as the backgrounds in the image. Candied photograph’s have relation between shape and geometry. If they don’t relate to these things then its classed as a bad photograph states the photographer.

Here are some examples of some photos I took in St Malo trying to recreate some of Henri’s art.