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The Origin of Photography

Photography was invented by Frenchman Nicéphore Niépce in 1822. Niépce developed a technique called heliography, which he used to create the world’s oldest surviving photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras (1827). Heliography was conceived in response to camera obscura theories dating back to ancient history.

  • Camera Obscura & Pinhole photography

The camera obscura or pinhole image is a natural optical phenomenon. Early known descriptions are found in the Chinese Mozi writings (circa 500 BCE) and the Aristotelian Problems (circa 300 BCE – 600 CE). A diagram depicting Ibn al-Haytham’s observations of light’s behaviour through a pinhole Early pinhole camera.

A pinhole lensless camera is a light-tight box with a very fine round hole in one end and film or photographic paper in the other. Light passes through the hole; an image is formed in the camera.

Pinhole history

The first picture of a pinhole camera obscura is a drawing by Gemma Frisus’ De Radio, an astronomer. He used the pinhole in his darkened room to study the solar eclipse of 1544.

The image-forming ability of a tiny hole is thought to have been known thousands of years ago by nomadic tribes of North Africa, who lived in animal skin tents. A pinhole in the tent would project an image of the brilliant scene outside.

Leonardo da Vinci in the 16th century gave a clear description in his notebooks: “When the images of illuminated objects pass through a small round hole into a very dark room…you will see on paper all those objects in their natural shapes and colours.”

Camera obscura

Drawing by Brook Taylor. Leonardo da Vinci gave a clear description of the Camera Obscura in the 16th century.

What is the difference between a pinhole camera and a camera obscura?

A camera obscura without a lens but with a very small hole is sometimes referred to as a pinhole camera, although this more often refers to simple (homemade) no lens cameras where photographic film or photographic paper is used.

What is camera obscura in photography?

A camera obscura, or a pinhole camera, is a simple device that is often thought of as a precursor to the modern camera. The camera obscura, Latin for “dark chamber”, consists of a dark chamber or box with a small hole in one of the four walls (or the ceiling).

What is the pinhole method of photography?

Pinhole photography uses the most basic concepts of a camera. A lightproof box, an aperture, and light-sensitive material. Light is passed through the pinhole to project an inverted image onto the paper or film on the opposite end of the camera. The distance between the pinhole and film determines the angle of view.

  • Nicephore Niepce & Heliography

What was Joseph Nicéphore Niépce development of photography?

Niépce called his process heliography, from the Greek helios meaning ‘drawing with the sun’. In 1826, using this process, Niépce took the earliest surviving ‘photograph’—a view from a window of his house in Chalons-sur-Saône which required an exposure of about 8 hours! Nicéphore Niépce called this first image a ‘heliograph’, literally ‘sun writing’ or ‘work of the sun. ‘ Announcing the principles of his method came with tangible accomplishments. To make the heliograph, Niépce dissolved light-sensitive bitumen in oil of lavender and applied a thin coating over a polished pewter plate. He inserted the plate into a camera obscura and positioned it near a window in his second-story workroom. After several days of exposure to sunlight, the plate yielded an impression of the courtyard, outbuildings, and trees outside. Writing about his process in December 1827, Niépce acknowledged that it required further improvements, but was nevertheless “the first uncertain step in a completely new direction.”

What is heliography used for?

Heliography from helios, meaning “sun”, is the photographic process invented, and named thus, by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce around 1822, which he used to make the earliest known surviving photograph from nature. The Niépce Heliograph passed through a chain of private hands in Britain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries before it was purchased by the Harry Ransom Center in 1963 as part of the Gernsheim Collection. More than twenty of Niépce’s heliographic plates and prints made between 1825 and 1829 are held in public and private collections, yet the Niépce Heliograph is the only known surviving point de vue.

How does a heliograph work?

The heliograph was the invention of a British engineer who attached a mirror to surveying equipment in order to redirect a beam of light on distant points. Through the use of sunlight, mirrors, and a keying system to interrupt the signal, flashes could be thrown on and off a receiving station.

  • Louis Daguerre & Daguerreotype

What did Louis Daguerre discover?

Louis Daguerre | daguerreotype, photography, inventor ...

Louis Daguerre (born November 18, 1787, Cormeilles, near Paris, France, died July 10, 1851, Bry-sur-Marne) was a French painter and physicist who invented the first practical process of photography, known as the daguerreotype.

What was the daguerreotype and why was it significant?

The daguerreotype process made it possible to capture the image seen inside a camera obscura and preserve it as an object. It was the first practical photographic process and ushered in a new age of pictorial possibility. The process was invented in 1837 by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787–1851).

What was the daguerreotype and why was it significant?

The daguerreotype process produces a highly detailed, unique object. It is a direct-positive process, meaning no negative is made. To make a daguerreotype, a sheet of copper is plated with a thin coat of silver. This plate is then cleaned and polished to a mirror finish. Next, it is sensitised in a lighttight box with iodine and bromine vapours until its surface turns yellow. The reaction between the iodine vapor and the silver coating produces light-sensitive silver iodide.

  • Henry Fox Talbot & Calotype

What did Henry Fox Talbot discover?

Henry Fox Talbot was credited as the British inventor of photography. In 1834 he discovered how to make and fix images through the action of light and chemistry on paper. These ‘negatives’ could be used to make multiple prints and this process revolutionised image making.

Talbot’s major invention, resulting from his experiments, was called the ‘calotype’ sometimes referred to as the ‘talbotype’. This technique creates a paper-based photographic print using a paper negative. The positive-negative process allows many positive prints to be made of the same image, as the negative can be printed multiple times. The earliest surviving negative is one by Talbot depicting the lattice window at Lacock Abbey, made in August 1835.

What is the difference between calotype and daguerreotype?

The main difference between the daguerreotype process and Talbot’s calotype process was reproducibility. The calotype process first produced a photographic ‘negative’ in the camera, from which many ‘positive’ calotype prints could be made, whereas daguerreotypes were a one-off image.

What is the difference between calotype and daguerreotype?

The main difference between the daguerreotype process and Talbot’s calotype process was reproducibility. The calotype process first produced a photographic ‘negative’ in the camera, from which many ‘positive’ calotype prints could be made, whereas daguerreotypes were a one-off image.

  • Robert Cornelius & self-portraiture

What was the world’s first selfie a self-portrait taken by Cornelius in 1839?

Setting up his camera at the back of the family store in Philadelphia, Cornelius took the image by removing the lens cap and then running into frame where he sat for a minute before covering up the lens again. On the back of the image he wrote “The first light Picture ever taken. 1839.”

What is Robert Cornelius best known for?

Robert Cornelius - Wikipedia

He operated some of the earliest photography studios in the United States between 1840 and 1842 and implemented innovative techniques to significantly reduce the exposure time required for portraits. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. He was an inventor, businessman and lamp manufacturer.

What is the theme of the self-portrait?

The self-portrait as we know it today focuses on the artist themselves, often with eyes fixed on the viewer. It’s a bold art form, requiring the artist to examine themselves as a subject and to situate their body in the canon. The self-portrait can be a practice of therapy, self-discovery, or personal myth-making.

In late September 1839, soon after the daguerreotype  was publicized, Joseph Saxton took a picture of the Philadelphia Central High School, which is considered one of the oldest photographs taken in the United States. Soon after, Saxton approached Cornelius in order to receive better daguerreotype plates. It was this meeting that sparked Cornelius’s interest in photography. 

  • Julia Margeret Cameron & Pictorialism

What genre of photography is Julia Margaret Cameron known for?

Julia Margaret Cameron is known for painterly photographic portraits of some of the most celebrated figures in Victorian England and for staged allegorical images drawn from poetry, literature, and the Bible.

Julia Margaret Cameron was 48 when she received her first camera, a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. . Before then, Cameron had compiled albums and experimented with printing photographs from negatives. On one occasion she printed a negative by the pioneering Swedish art photographer O.G. Rejlander, surrounding the portrait with ferns to create a photogram frame – a combination of an image made in a camera and a camera-less technique. It shows Cameron’s experimental nature and provides a glimpse of her photographic practice before she acquired a camera of her own.

When Cameron took up photography, it involved hard physical work using potentially hazardous materials. The wooden camera, which sat on a tripod, was large and cumbersome. She used the most common process at the time, producing albumen prints from wet collodion glass negatives. The process required a glass plate (approximately 12 x 10 inch) to be coated with photosensitive chemicals in a darkroom and exposed in the camera when still damp. The glass negative was then returned to the darkroom to be developed, washed and varnished. Prints were made by placing the negative directly on to sensitised photographic paper and exposing it to sunlight.

Each step of the process offered room for mistakes: the fragile glass plate had to be perfectly clean to start with and kept free from dust throughout; it needed to be evenly coated and submerged at various stages; the chemical solutions had to be correctly and freshly prepared.

  • Henry Mullins & Carte-de-Visit

What is the history of carte-de-visite art?

Carte-de-visite | Victorian, Portraiture & Albums | Britannica

Carte-de-visite, originally, a calling card, especially one with a photographic portrait mounted on it. It was immensely popular in the mid-19th century, the carte-de-visite was touted by the Parisian portrait photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, who patented the method in 1854.

‘Carte de visite’ translates from the French as ‘visiting card’ or ‘calling card’, It was first used in France by Louis Dodero, though it was subsequently patented by Adolphe Eugene Disderi in 1854.

Primarily, they were albumen prints, usually portraits and were mounted on thick card to stop the image being creased. The card usually measured 64mm (2.5 inches) by 100mm (4 inches). The actual photograph varied in size depending on the photographer.

The story goes that this method of mounting a photograph on a calling card seemed a bit vulgar and was slow to gain acceptance, but they really took off when Disderi published and marketed Napoleon III image as a CDV in 1859 and the ‘well to do’ naturally followed suit. Queen Victoria was also a devotee and her patronage also increased its awakening to the general public.

Henry Mullins was by far the most prolific of the first generation of Jersey photographers in the mid-nineteenth century. He produced thousands of portraits of islanders between 1848 and 1873 at his highly successful studio in the prime location of the Royal Square, St Helier.

As a commercial photographer he consistently embraced the rapid technical progress that ran in parallel with his career. While numerous photographic studios opened across the town of St Helier in the 1850s and 1860s, Henry Mullins continued to be the photographer of choice for leading members of Jersey society and successful local and immigrant families. Mullins’s productivity was matched by the technical standard of his work; qualities that are exemplified in the richness of the portraits of Victorian islanders preserved on the pages of his photograph albums.

Richard Maddox

In England, 1871, Dr Richard Maddox, a physician suggested that sensitising chemicals, calcium bromide and silver nitrate, should be coated on a glass plate in gelatin. From this suggestion, Charles Bennett, made the first gelatin dry plates for sale, soon after the emulsion of these chemicals could then be placed onto celluloid roll film.

These lightweight, gelatin negative plates revolutionised photography at the time. Through a commercial market these dry plates bought off a shelf, saved photographers from having to prepare their own emulsions in a dark room, instead these didn’t have to developed straight away and could be stored for later development. His work also would later go onto the construction of small enough, hand-held cameras.

Because of Richard Leach Maddox, M.D., photography was given an early impetus to become a disseminator of medical knowledge. His interest in the camera, combined with his poor health and his medical training, enabled him to invent the gelatin bromide negative that is the backbone of today’s photographic film.

Born in Bath, England, in 1816, Maddox studied medicine at University College, London. For unknown reasons, he took his degree at Edinburgh. Ill-health from early childhood prompted a voyage around the world before he settled in Constantinople, where he married and practiced medicine for some years.

What did Dr Richard Maddox create that allowed photographers?

Dr. Richard Maddox created a dry plate technique that allowed photographers to develop photographs without using the wet methods of the collodion process. This technique involved using gelatin instead of glass to make photographic negatives.

  • George Eastman

Born in New York, Eastman was an American entrepreneur and inventor who developed the first Kodak Camera. In the lead up to this his contributions can be seen beginning in 1880 when he perfected the process of making dry plates for photography, a process first made by Richard Maddox. Operating in London, he manufactured these dry plates from a factory and established the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company. Applying the perfected process of the dry plates onto film, Eastman was able to make the first ‘Kodak’, which in 1888 he placed on the market.

In 1889, George Eastman and his company made their largest contribution to Photography with the introduction of roll film. Produced on a transparent base, this has since remained standard for film.

Why did George Eastman invent the camera?

George Eastman invented the camera and related innovations after he realized that existing photographic equipment was extremely cumbersome. In 1880, he made his first innovation to improve upon these technologies when he perfected the dry-plate technique.

  • Kodak (Brownie)

The Kodak “Brownie” camera made its debut at the turn of the twentieth century and sold for one dollar. One hundred thousand of them were purchased during the first year alone. The Brownie helped to put photography into the hands of amateurs and allowed the middle class to take their own “snapshots” as well.

Eastman Kodak introduced the new Brownie dollar box camera in 1900; the release was supported by a major advertising campaign. The name “Brownie” was chosen primarily because of the popularity of a children’s book of cartoons of the same name, and partly because the camera was initially manufactured for Eastman by Frank Brownell of Rochester, New York.

With Kodak’s developments with photography one of their most important inventions, ‘The Brownie’, created to take images easily and quickly, allowed for amateurs within photography take their own ‘snapshots’. Due to the nature of photography being quite costly it was useful reserved for those of a higher class, however this let the middle class into the art too. Invented in 1900, its marketing was highly popular and saw their ownership on a massive scale.

  • Film/Print Photography

What is considered film photography?

During film photography, a roll of light-sensitive film is placed within the camera. When the shutter of the camera is open, the film is exposed to light and an impression is captured. After the exposure is made, the photographer rolls the film forward so a fresh section of unexposed film is ready for the next photo.

What is film style photography?

Cinematic photography is a style of photography that emulates stills or frames from movie scenes. It is a highly effective storytelling technique that can create images with depth and feeling.

There are still quite a few professional photographers using film, again, often in addition to digital photography.

  • Digital Photography

Digital photography is a technology that uses digital cameras to capture images. Unlike analog or film cameras, digital cameras do not use film on which to record images. Rather, digital cameras use image sensors that convert light into electric signals.

Development of St Helier Harbour.

Saint Helier, chief town, resort, parish, and the capital of Jersey, in the Channel Islands The town lies along St. Aubin’s Bay opposite a tidal island known as L’Islet (accessible by causeway at low tide), on the south side of Jersey Island. The town is named for St. Helier, a Frankish missionary who was reputedly martyred there in 555. The saint’s memory is preserved in the Hermitage, a small 12th-century oratory on L’Islet, as well as in the Abbey (later Priory) of St. Helier, founded in the mid-12th century by Robert FitzHamon, of Gloucester.

The town originated as a fishing village that grew up beside the parish church, where from the 13th century the king’s courts usually met and where markets were held. St. Helier became the seat of island government after Elizabeth Castle was built (1551–90) on L’Islet. This castle was the refuge (1646–48) of Lord Clarendon, who there began his History of the Rebellion, and of the fugitive Charles II in 1646 and 1649. Harbour works were begun in 1700, and the modern harbour dates from 1841. The marketplace (now Royal Square) was the scene of the French defeat at the Battle of Jersey (1781). The marketplace is dominated by the Court House, La Salle des Etats (States House), and the Public Library (founded 1736) and is overlooked (south) by Fort Regent (1806). Victoria College dates from 1852. About one-third of Jersey’s population lives in St. Helier, which is the focus of island transport, commerce, government, and cultural activity.

Ports of Jersey is embarking on a once-in-a-generation programme to transform the harbours in St Helier. The plans will ensure the port’s long-term viability, improve customer experience, create new commercial opportunities, and realise the area’s potential as a leisure, cultural and tourism destination.

Jersey Harbour – St Helier

Saint Helier Harbour is the main harbour on the Channel Island of Jersey. It is on the south coast of the island, occupying most of the coast of the main town of St Helier. It is operated b Ports of Jersey, a company wholly owned by the Government of Jersey.

Facilities include three marinas for berthing private yachts on pontoons, drying harbours and facilities for commercial shipping including roll on roll off ferry berths, a tanker berth and a dock for lift on lift off cargo ships.

Photoshoot 1

For this photoshoot, it required a trip to St Helier Harbour. We walked around the harbour and took many shots of the view around. Following that, we got a guided tour filled with history of jerseys harbour.

Edited Photos of Jerseys Harbour.

To edit my images, I used Adobe Lightroom classic and adjusted exposure, brightness, contrast, colour balance etc. For all 10 images, I did half in colour to half in black and white. I wanted to go from romanticising the harbour and its ‘beauty'(being shown by the colour) and how Jerseys harbour is advertised now, to getting back to the reality of everyday life and how it was back years ago(being shown by the black and white). For the black and white images, i focused on the presence section of developing my images on adobe Lightroom, this made an older looking effect for these images. For the coloured images, i looked at all the effects and adjusted them, making the colours stand out to attract the eye.

To final down all my images, I went across all the photos, and found all the ones that were very similar. After this, I colour coded them so I could take my zine pictures.

Evaluation

  • How successful was your photoshoot?

My photoshoot was pretty successful. I think that having an idea of a final outcome proceeded to having a successful photoshoot. I like all my images, they went exactly how I wanted them too. To develop my photoshoot images from here, I am going to create a 16 page photo-zine in InDesign.

Photoshoot 2

For this photoshoot, we went on a trip to Jerseys Maritime Museum. We walked round the museum capturing interesting things, as well as a talk from Doug Ford.

He taught us a bit about jerseys maritime history and his own experiences.

Jersey’s Maritime History

What was the involvement of Jersey mariners in the Canadian cod-fisheries and the Transatlantic carrying trade?

has been more than 400 years since the first Islanders crossed the Atlantic in search of pastures new. They went to plunder the cod-rich seas of the American and Canadian coast. When the first Europeans reached Canada is unclear, but it is thought to be Italian explorer John Cabot’s descriptions of ‘new found lands’ and a sea swarming with fish in 1497 that drew fishermen to the north of the continent, and around 1600 English fishing captains still reported cod shoals By the beginning of the 16th-century Basque fishermen were travelling to the region to fish and, by 1580, around 10,000 European fishermen were making the transatlantic voyage to the area each year to fish for cod. Channel Island fishermen were among these and by the 1750s they had set up lucrative trade routes between Canada, Europe and America, establishing bases on the Gaspé Coast where they could salt and prepare the cod. 

Which ports did Jersey ships sail to and trade with?

Jersey has been an island for approximately 8,000 years: therefore, apart from the last 60 years, the only way for people to come to or leave the island has been by sea. Over the centuries the way in which boats have been powered has changed – muscle power, wind power, steam power and now diesel power. We know that the Neolithic farmers settled Jersey when it had once more become an island, it is safe to assume that they had the skill to make some form of boat. In addition, we know that they were also able to sail and navigate between the island and Armorica and over what is now the English Channel to the mainland. St Aubin was the main harbour for Jersey merchants before St Helier became the central maritime hub. St Helier harbours were proving too small for the larger ships and increasing tonnages, with both drying out at low tide. Jersey added a few piers to its harbour, such as Victoria and Albert Piers.

What type of goods did Jersey merchants exchange for cod-fish?

Cod was dried and salted, then shipped to the Caribbean to be sold and fed to the slaves.

One of Jersey’s premier cod-merchants, Charles Robin, who founded Charles Robin Company in 1766 (second oldest incorporated firm to be founded in Canada which only ceased operation in 2006 albeit under different ownership).

The main trade continued across the channel, where the islands were given concessions. These included dried cod from Newfoundland and Gaspe coast, cloth, wine, wool, leather and household goods. Jersey cod-merchants also exported cod-fish to British colonies in the West Indies and later Brazil too in exchange for plantation goods, such as sugar, molasses, rum, cotton, coffee and tobacco which it brought to markets in America, Europe and the UK (inc. Jersey). Within that context Jersey benefitted from the profits made in the British Empire build on a capitalist model of a slave-based economy.

How has the island of Jersey benefited from its constitutional relationship with Britain and the legacies of colonialism based on a slave plantation economy during the first Industrial Revolution (1760-1840)?

The change from sail saw a major decline in the maritime activities of the islands: commercial shipbuilding had boomed in the 1850s with 20,000 tons a year before collapsing to 3,000 tons built per year in the 1880s, as iron and steel were not available in the islands. By the end of the century, island fleets had just 150 ships with a total tonnage of just 11,000.

Since the war, fishing has been reduced, with lobsters and crabs becoming the main catch in the islands with an annual value of around £10m in 1995. Private boating has increased with the construction of marinas. Freighting changing from loose and pallets to containers with Ro Ro for vehicles. Hydrofoils and then catamarans and wave piercers appeared as fast passenger ships.

Cod fishing in North American waters that became the dominant industry in Jersey. As this activity began to become viable so this attracted interest from Jersey. It is possible that initially the interest was from people from Jersey crewing French boats operating from St Malo, but it was not long before some of the more entrepreneurial Jersey merchants, based in St Aubin, began fishing in North American waters in their own right. There is clear evidence of Jersey merchants operating in the Newfoundland area in the late 16th century. By the second half of the 17th century as many as 20 Jersey vessels were operating around Newfoundland. For a variety of reasons the industry then declined but resumed growth in the first part of the 18th century. In 1731 it is estimated that 17 Jersey vessels sailed to Newfoundland with 1,500 seamen and by then permanent bases had been established in Conception Bay.

The second half of the 18th century saw the focus of the industry move from Newfoundland to what is now mainland Canada. A landmark event was the establishment by a leading Jersey merchant, Charles Robin, of a factory in Paspébiac in the Gaspé peninsular, marking a significant move to land-based operations. By the 1770s there may have been up to 70 Jersey ships and 2,000 Jerseymen engaged in the cod trade. By the 1840s it is estimated that the industry directly employed 4,000 people. Also, many others were engaged in manufacturing goods to be exported to the Canadian settlements.

The Island Of Jersey

This project was based on street photography, capturing someone/people in the moment. I used Adobe InDesign to create this spread sheet. I used pictures from my street photography project, and set them out in three different ways.

This is my final outcome of my spread sheet. I picked this one as I like how all the pictures correspond with each other. I also like the layout of the sheet. For the writing, I played around and put a shadow behind it, as well as the pictures.

As i didnt go to St Malo, i did this project on the island of jersey.

Street Photography

Street photography is a genre of photography that records everyday life in a public place. The very publicness of the setting enables the photographer to take candid pictures of strangers, often without their knowledge. Street photographers do not necessarily have a social purpose in mind, but they prefer to isolate and capture moments which might otherwise go unnoticed.

Does there have to be a ‘street’?

No. The term is both limiting and misleading. Sounds like a street photography should be photos of a streets, however its all about capturing a moment. All street photographers, except for a small number of absolute beginners, will fully appreciate that a street is not the key component to street photography, and actually if it’s a picture of a street with maybe a few boring people doing nothing of interest, that’s not street photography, that’s a snapshot of a street.

Mood Board

Virtual Gallery

Cropping

To crop an image is to remove or adjust the outside edges of an image, usually a photo, to improve framing or composition, draw a viewer’s eye to the subject, or change the size or aspect ratio. In other words, photo cropping is the act of improving an image by removing unnecessary parts. It may seem illogical, but the most interesting and eye-catching photos rarely have their subject smack-bang in the middle of the image. In fact, it’s a fundamental rule of photography that your primary subject shouldn’t be in the centre.

The rule of thirds

The rule of thirds divides all images into three equal horizontal and vertical sections (or nine individual boxes) separated by grid lines. Normally, you want to place the points of interest near the spots where these grid lines intersect.

You need to take in to consideration:

  • The discovery of background elements you didn’t realize were there
  • Issues with the framing or composition
  • To better focus on your subject

Mood Board

This is a mood board of cropping. As you can see the pictures usually have a main focus, this is all down to cropping, where you narrow down the image to focus on one subject.

My attempt at cropping

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Who is Henri Cartier-Bresson?

Henri Cartier-Bresson, born August 22, 1908 Chanteloup, France, and died August 3, 2004, Céreste, was a French photographer whose humane, spontaneous photographs helped establish photojournalism as an art form.

His photographs impart spontaneous instances with meaning, mystery, and humour in terms of precise visual organization, and his work, although tremendously difficult to imitate, has influenced many other photographers. His photographs may be summed up through a phrase of his own: “the decisive moment,” the magical instant when the world falls into apparent order and meaning, and may be apprehended by a gifted photographer.

The Decisive Moment

Henri Cartier-Bresson is rightfully recognized as a master of the craft. He was one of the first true street photographers and artfully captured everyday life through the lens. But he also coined a term:

The “Decisive Moment”.

With it he described the exact instance when a unique event is captured by the photographer. When something that may never happen again is frozen in the frame. He said it best himself, in an iconic quote:

“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.”

Beyond “The Decisive Moment”, the title of his 1952 landmark monograph and philosophical theory on photographing as the artless art, Cartier-Bresson was a zealous geometrician and strictly adhered to only composing within the camera and never in the darkroom. His passion for visual harmony, humanity and the impermanence of reality focused by a classically trained eye allowed for the creation of an unrivalled body of historic imagery.

How did Henri Cartier become famous?

He was drafted into the film and photo unit of the French army in 1940 and was taken prisoner by the Germans that same year. After three years of imprisonment he escaped and began working for the French underground. In 1943 he made series of portraits of artists, including Matisse, Bonnard, and Braque. Through 1944 and 1945, Cartier-Bresson photographed the occupation of France and its liberation. In 1947 he co-founded the Magnum agency with David Seymour, and George Rodger. He spent the next twenty years traveling around the world, then received the Overseas Press Club Award four times; the ‘American Society of Magazine Photographers award’ in 1953; and the ‘Prix de la Société Française de Photographie’ in 1959

A few Iconic Artworks By Henri Cartier Bresson

Rue Mouffetard, Paris

Seville, Spain

Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare

What did Henri Cartier-Bresson discover?

In 1931, Cartier-Bresson discovered the hand-held Leica camera and was practically consumed by the new art form.

He was known for using only one camera, a Leica rangefinder, and one lens, a 50mm, for almost all of his life’s work. The Leica continued to be the go to device for photographers after World War II, especially for New York City photographers such as Roy De Carava, Lisette Model, William Klein, and Helen Levitt. Robert Frank, who is best known for his book The Americans (1959) and was the leading influence on street photographers of the succeeding generation, documented culture throughout the United States and in Europe.