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. 

He studied painting when he was just 5 years old, taking an apprenticeship in his uncle Louis’ studio. Cartier-Bresson was introduced to oil painting by his uncle Louis, a gifted painter and winner of the Prix de Rome in 1910. But his painting lessons were cut short when uncle Louis was killed in World War I.

The Decisive Moment

In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book The Decisive Moment. Cartier-Bresson took his keynote text from Volume 2 of the Memoirs of 17th century Cardinal De Ritz “There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment”. Cartier-Bresson applied this to his photographic style. He said: 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.

“Photography is not like painting. There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. 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. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”

Cartier-Bresson’s photography took him to many places, including China, Mexico, Canada, the United States, India, Japan, Portugal and the Soviet Union. While traveling in China in 1958, Cartier-Bresson documented the construction of the Ming Tombs Reservoir He became the first Western photographer to photograph “freely” in the post-war Soviet Union.

Technique

Cartier-Bresson almost always used a Leica 35 mm rangefinder camera fitted with a normal 50 mm lens, or occasionally a wide-angle lens for landscapes. He often wrapped black tape around the camera’s chrome body to make it less conspicuous. With fast black and white film and sharp lenses, he was able to photograph events unnoticed.

He never photographed with flash, a practice he saw as “impolite…like coming to a concert with a pistol in your hand.”

He believed in composing his photographs in the viewfinder, not in the darkroom. He showcased this belief by having nearly all his photographs printed only at full-frame and completely free of any cropping or other darkroom manipulation. He insisted that his prints be left uncropped so as to include a few millimetres of the unexposed negative around the image area, resulting in a black frame around the developed picture.

He worked exclusively in black and white, other than a few experiments in colour. He disliked developing or making his own prints and showed a considerable lack of interest in the process of photography in general, likening photography with the small camera to an “instant drawing”. Technical aspects of photography were valid for him only where they allowed him to express what he saw.

Image Analysis

This image was taken 1954. The decisive moment is the boy with two wine bottles in each of his arms. The boy’s face expresses happiness and a cheeky smile, In the background you see more children looking at the boy and it seems like he knows they are looking because he has his head held high a proud smirk on his face. The image is solely focussed on the boy in the middle so you can’t tell if there are any adults around or with the other children in the background. The boy’s name was Michel Gabriel and when he grew up he kept in touch with Henri Cartier-Bresson.

My photos are in order of my favourite images and final results from the typography and Anthropocene topic. For all the images in the galleries I made, I added perspective to each and distorted them to make them the right shape for the perspective. This made sure that all the images where correctly placed against the walls where they are on the side or at an angle. I added drop shadows to make it look like they are mounted against the wall for a more realistic look. I used different galleries for each theme. Where I have more final images than the other I used a more strategic gallery where I can fit more images into it, for example typography has the most final images so I went with a more spacious and complex design that has the most area to put images so I could fit all my chosen images in. However, my Anthropocene gallery is square shaped as I did not have many final images so I went with a gallery that would be easy to fill without it looking underwhelming compared to my typography gallery.

Typography + Anthropocene Gallery

Typography Gallery

Anthropocene Gallery

Typography Final Images

Anthropocene Final Images

Experimenting with Images + Final Photos

For these images I experimented on I used the same technique for them all. I started off by using the magnetic lasso tool on photoshop and outlining the section I wanted to put a filter on. after I outlined the section I selected the filter I wanted. For this I used a variety of different ones I used ‘Strong’ which is a black and white filter for all my black and white images as I found it was the most prominent and I liked how strong the blacks and whites were. I used ‘Blue Mood’ for a blue-purple sky, and ‘Split Tone’ for the yellow-green sky.

Firstly flagged my favourite images and narrowed it down from 73 to 15 images.

I then went through my flagged images and edited my favourite ones from that selection.

In this image it is of a snake covering plastic. The snake represents nature and wildlife while the plastic and hand represent humans doing damage to the world due to plastic pollution. For this image I turned highlights and whites and turned down shadows and blacks as the original picture looked dull with no vibrancy and colour, (which could have worked well for the topic) but I decided to make it lighter and more vibrant. I also turned up the texture and clarity slightly so you could see the shapes and patterns properly and more clearly. this also contributed to the pop of colour in the image.

This image is of a snake wrapped around a plastic bottle. I think this image shows Anthropocene and typography as it represents life (the snake) and how it is wrapped around a plastic bottle which shows how plastic is polluting the world and the human hand to symbolise its humans doing it. I chose to put the image in black and white as I didn’t originally like the colour contrast of the snake, hand and bottle all mixed together and I preferred the way it looked in black and white. I turned the contrast and clarity up to get sharper point in the photo and really define all the features in this image.

This image is of a dog looking at treats through a plastic bag. I took this image of the dog looking into the treat bag to show that humans look after these animals and they rely on humans for food and care. I think this relates to the Anthropocene topic indirectly because it shows the care for animals instead of if they had improper care, were stray, being hunted or if their environment was destroyed. For this image I added an effect where the outside of the image is highlighted and glowing. I also turned the highlights down a lot and turned the black tone up to make the image darker so the effect stands out more.

This image goes with the other dog image where this time the dog isn’t looking at the plastic bag and is looking into the camera. I made this image black and white because I like the way the dog is smiling into the camera, the black and white contrasts with this and I like how it came out.

I chose my first photoshoot to be of vehicles and fuels. I chose this theme as I was inspired by Edward Burtynsky’s photos of cars.

This image is of old broken cars that are used for parts. I thought this related to the topic as I think that cars are a big part of pollution and their fuels and emissions. I also chose to take pictures of cars from an angle looking down as I was inspired by Edward Burtynsky’s work on images of cars. I decided to keep the picture in colour as I think that it looked boring in black and white, whereas in colour it you can see all the details of the cars that aren’t being used and are broken. I also think the colours made it look messy which I liked because it makes you have to look properly into the image which is quite scruffy when you first glance at it but when you look into the details it gives you more of a story behind the image that the cars are being used for scraps which you may not see when you originally look at the image.

I decided to take this picture as it was also inspired by Edward Burtynsky’s car images but instead I chose to take pictures of a lot of PED bikes and motorbikes, instead of a large amount of cars. This image is different to the car image as the cars where being used for scraps but instead these bikes work. I started off edited this image by cropping it as there was lots of the road in the image and it looked bad. I made the image darker but made all the colour stand out more which matched the colours of the first picture of cars in the scrap so they look nice together.

This is another image of scraps and cars being used for scraps. I chose to edit this image because it goes along well with my theme for this photoshoot. this image is different to the other so far because it isn’t based particularly on cars there are other things in this image like cones, tyres and a big container box. I chose to also edit this image differently from the other two vibrant images and went for a duller less vibrant picture. I achieved this by minimally editing the tone just turning the highlights up slightly and the whites and blacks both down slightly.

This image is of a motorbike exhaust. I chose this image because it is a more detailed picture of one specific thing instead of taking a picture where there is a lot going on like in the other pictures. For this image I turned vibrancy up all the way, I liked how this turned out because it made the image really stand out and shows every detail of the bike.

Mood board

What is Anthropocene?

Anthropocene is used to simply describe the time during which humans have had a substantial impact on our planet. Whether or not we are in a new geological age, we are part of a complex, global system and the evidence of our impact on it has become clear. The current geological age, viewed as the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.

Consequences of the Anthropocene

These human actions cause, among other consequences, changes in the water cycle, imbalances and destructions in the marine and terrestrial ecosystems, the increase of extreme meteorological phenomena, the acidification of the oceans or the disappearance of the forests.

When did Anthropocene begin?

It began in 1950. The resulting radioactive particles were detected in soil samples globally. In 2016, the Anthropocene Working Group agreed that the Anthropocene is different from the Holocene, and began in the year 1950 when the Great Acceleration, a dramatic increase in human activity affecting the planet, took off.

The Anthropocene Project

The Anthropocene Project is a multidisciplinary body of work combining fine art photography, film, virtual reality, augmented reality, and scientific research to investigate human influence on the state, dynamic, and future of the Earth.

“UNLIKE PAST MASS EXTINCTIONS, CAUSED BY EVENTS LIKE ASTEROID STRIKES, VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS AND NATURAL CLIMATE SHIFTS, THE CURRENT CRISIS IS ALMOST ENTIRELY CAUSED BY US — HUMANS.”

An armed soldier stands guard as the 105 tons of ivory are burned in a game reserve outside the capital city of Nairobi, a stockpile that would have been worth more than £100million to smugglers.

What is AI?

Artificial intelligence is the science of making machines that can think like humans. It can do things that are considered “smart.” AI technology can process large amounts of data in ways, unlike humans. The goal for AI is to be able to do things such as recognize patterns, make decisions, and judge like humans

How does AI work to create images? 

Artificial neural networks mimic the brain’s process to recognize patterns. Convolutional neural networks specialize in the ability to identify objects and patterns in data. The neurons are a specialized form that works in a similar manner as the human eye.

Mood Board