| The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers - writings on photography and photographers (1999) |
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| Overview |
The first compilation of writings by a master of photography. One of the leading lights in photography of the twentieth century, Henri Cartier-Bresson is also a shrewd observer and critic. His writings on photography and photographers, which have appeared sporadically over the past forty-five years, are gathered here for the first time. Several have never before appeared in English. The Mind's Eye features Cartier-Bresson's famous text on "the decisive moment" as well as his observations on Moscow, Cuba, and China during turbulent times, which ring with the same immediacy and visual intensity that he brings to his photography. Cartier-Bresson remains as direct and insightful as ever in his writings. His commentary on photographer friends he has known-including Robert Capa, André Kertész, Ernst Haas, and Sarah Moon-reveal the impassioned and compassionate vision for which Cartier-Bresson is beloved. |
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| Noteworthy bits |
| HCB writes about his approach
p15 - "Manufactured or staged photography does not concern me... There are those who take photographs arranged beforehand and those who go out to discover an image and seize it. for me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrumernt of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously." p25 two kinds of selection to be made: when we look through the viewfonder at the subject, and then the selection we make after developing and printing. At this stage select the strongest. p27 "Of all the means of expression photography is the only one which fixes forever the precise and transitory instant. We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory. The writer has time to reflect. He can accept and reject accept again and before committing his thoughts to paper he is abIe to tie the several relevant elements together... But for photographers, what has gone is gone forever. From that fact stem the anxieties and strength of our profession. We cannot do our story over again once we've got back to the hotel. Our task is to perceive reality aImost simultaneously recording it in the skectchbook which is our camera. We must neither try to manipulate reality while we are shooting nor manipuIate the results in the darkroom. These tricks are patently discernable to those who have eyes to see." p31 "It seems to me it would be pretty difficult to be a portrait photographer for customers who order and pay since... they want to be flattered and the result is no longer real." p32 on composition: "What the eye does is to find and focus on the particular subject within the mass of reality what the camera does is simply register (on film) the decision made by the eye". p34 I hope we will never see the day when photo shops sell little schema grils to clamp onto our viewfinders and the Golden Rule will never be etched on our ground gIass. p34 If you start cutting and cropping a good photograph, it means death to the geometrically correct interplay of proportions. Besides, it very rarely happens that a photograph which was feebly composed can be saved by reconstruction of its composition (under the darkroom's enlarger) the integrity of vision is no longer there. There is a lot of talk about camera angles but the only valid angles in existence are the angles of the geometry of composition and not the ones fabricated by the photographer who falls flat on his stomach or performs other antics to procure his effects. |