Henri Cartier- Bresson
Another photographer I
have chosen to use is Henri Cartier-Bresson who was a French photographer who
was considered to be the father of photojournalism and will be my historical
photojournalist photographer because there is an awful lot to talk about him
with his work of photojournalism.
He was a master of candid photography and an
early user of 35mm mm film which was one of his styles which helped him to
become a success. A candid photograph
is a photograph captured through motion which is without creating a posed
appearance.
He has helped develop
the street photography or life reportage style, and coined the term, The
Decisive Moment, that has inspired generations of photographers ever since.
He was born august 22nd 2908 Chanteloup en Brie, France and died
August 3rd 2004 aged 95.
;like many photographers
he became inspired by a 1930 photographer Hungarian photojournalist Martin Munkacsi
showing three naked young African boys, caught in near-silhouette, running into
the surf of Lake Tanganyika. The photo was called Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika. The photo captured the freedom,
grace of their movement and the joy of the boys being alive. That photograph
inspired him to stop painting and to take up photography and a result of this
made him very successful.
In his time he acquired
the Lecia camera with 50 mm lens in Marseilles that would accompany him
for many years the small camera gave him in a crowd or during an intimate
moment was essential in overcoming the formal and unnatural behavior of those
who were aware of being photographed.
His photographs have
been exhibited in exhibitions the first exhibition was at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1932. In 1934 in
Mexico, he shared an exhibition with Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Other exhibitions were when he
travelled to the United States in 1935 with an invitation to exhibit his work
at New York's Julien Levy Gallery. His work was shared in a displayed
space with fellow photographers Walker Evans
and Manuel Alvarez Bravo.
Another interesting
thing that helped Bresson’s success was in the early 1947, Cartier-Bresson,
with fellow photographers Robert Capa, David Seymour, William Vandivert and George Rodger
founded Magnum Photos which was a picture agency owned by themselves and in
the work they spilt photo assignments between each other. With
his Gallery foundation the objective is to preserve the independence and legacy
of Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck’s work.
Because he has taken
several pictures he decided In 1952 to publish his book which was called The
Decisive Moment. With this book it created sales and it included a
portfolio of 126 photos from the East and the West which created a living for
his work.
Cartier-Bresson's first photojournalist photos was published in 1947 when he did the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth which was for the French weekly regards. With the pictures he focused on the new monarch’s adoring subjects lining the London streets. With his style of work he decided to compose his photographs in the viewfinder, not in the darkroom. He decided he wanted all his photographs printed only at full-frame and completely free of any cropping or other darkroom manipulation. With his work he insisted that his prints were not cropped as they include the first few millimeters of the unexposed negative around the image area, resulting in a black frame around the developed picture. Other styles he liked to do was he worked in black and white. The reason for this is he disliked developing or making his own prints and had a lack of interest in the process of photography in general. One other thing I found out Bresson did was he received international recognition for his coverage of Gandhi’s funeral in 1948 which was the last stage of the Chinese Civil War which was in 1949 both events helped his international recognition which would have helped his career in growth/ publicity.
He began as a
freelancer earning a living and when his fame grew and developed he worked at companies
such as distinguished French companies producing regular photography work for
newspapers which then became a salaried career for him. He worked for the
company on assignments such as the company Magnum with the company Magnum they
had several books of his too. Because of this work it helped him have a
successful career and notable because he worked with famous people such as Malcolm
X, Martin Luther king and Marilyn Monroe. He also made a earning threw salaried
work by selling his work for fixed prices to companies then he had small percentages of money threw
photos being sold and then in the amount of sales sold through the companies
selling.
References used-
Exhibitions he has done-
Pictures evaluate-
With Bresson’s
work I found this picture which was one of his famous pieces of work because it
related to the book he created the decisive moment. This is why I like the
image because with the image he has a particular style which you can see is
black and white with no colour and even though it has no colour it still is a great
image of photojournalism. I like the image because it relates to the decisive
moment because it wasn’t a posed picture like he said he wouldn’t do and if it
was just before or just after the image wouldn’t look as good. The reason for this
is the bike is just about to leave the area around the corner so you wouldn’t
be able to capture it. Before where the man on the cyclists now is if it was
just before it could be blocked by the stair way and if it was further back he
wouldn’t have been in the image and this is one reason why I like the image.
The second reason I like the image is because there is a real sense of lines used
which is great because there’s several lines in the photo from different areas
of the image for instance with the path, the road, the stairway, below the
stair way and behind the man on the cyclist. And that is the reason for choosing
this image because it has great style of lines and a great decisive moment of
the photojournalism image.
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