Mood Board

Henri Cartier-Bresson key themes of photography:

Physical pleasure

Extension of the eye

Focuses on connecting humanity

How does Henri Cartier-Bresson view the activity of photography?

“To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It’s a way of life.” “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 gave that event its proper expression.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson described the “Decisive Moment” as the exact instance when a unique event is captured by the photographer – when something that may never happen again is frozen in the frame.

Biography

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.

Henri was educated in Paris and developed an early love for literature and the arts. His great-grandfather had been artist and an uncle was a noted printer. His father also dabbled in drawing.

In 1927 he began a two-year stint studying painting under noted early Cubist, André Lhote, then moved to Cambridge University to immerse himself further in art and literature courses. Sparked by the avant-garde scene enveloping Paris, and fresh from his release from the Army, which had stationed him just outside Paris, Cartier-Bresson travelled to Africa in 1931 to hunt antelope and boar. However, he eventually grew tired of the sport and gave it up. But Africa did fuel another interest in him: photography. He experimented with a simple Brownie he’d received as a gift, taking pictures of the new world around him. For Cartier-Bresson there were direct parallels between his old passion and his new one.

“I adore shooting photographs,” he’d later note. “It’s like being a hunter. But some hunters are vegetarians—which is my relationship to photography.” In short, as his frustrated editors would soon discover, Cartier-Bresson preferred taking shots rather than making prints and showing his work.

Upon returning to France later that year, Cartier-Bresson purchased his first 35mm Leica, a camera whose simple style and stunning results would help define the photographer’s work.

Throughout his life, he made clear his disdain for the augmented image, one that had been enhanced by artificial light, dark room effects, even cropping. The naturalist in Cartier-Bresson believed that all edits should be done when the image was made. 

The decisive moment

Henri Cartier-Bresson described the decisive moment as the exact instance when a unique event is captured by the photographer – when something that may never happen again is frozen in the frame.

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. As part of capturing the decisive moment, Henri took photographs of people who weren’t aware they were being photographed in order to capture their real behaviour instead of them becoming aware of the camera and changing what they’re doing/ how they are posing.

For example, in this image the decisive moment is the two people looking at each other. You can clearly see that they aren’t aware that they are currently being taken a picture of and are solely focussed on one another, showing their real, natural behaviour. Therefore, this is a good example of the decisive moment as there is no manipulation or pre determined poses, he simply captured what he saw in the moment. I also like this image as there is a clear contrast between the people and the background as the background consists of lighter shades of grey whereas the two people are dark grey/ black.