Decisive Moments in Bradford

This week it's up to Bradford, with a few other members of the Photographic Society, to visit the National Media Museum. The main attraction of the visit is an exhibition of the famous French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, or HCB as he is known among the cognoscenti. Trained initially as an artist he became famous for his pioneering photography from the 1930's through to the 1960's.

When most other serious photographers were still using large format cameras HCB adopted the relatively new Leica 35mm rangefinder 'miniature' camera. This enabled him to get close in to his subjects without being conspicuous. Even today the Leica, and its small lenses, is still a favourite of 'street photographers' who want to capture the spontaneity of people going about their daily lives.

But HCB can explain it better than I can. Here is part of what he said about photography:

"For me, the camera is a sketch-book, an instrument of intuition and sponataneity, the master of the instant which in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to give a meaning to the world, one must feel involved in what one singles out through the viewfinder. This attitude requires a concentration, sensitivity, a discipline of mind and a sense of geometry."

If you have heard anything at all about HCB, you will have heard the expression 'the decisive moment in time'. Every photograph of course captures a single moment of time, but HCB was the master at capturing that precise moment when all the elements in his viewfinder came together in a happy juxtaposition to change a mere moment into the decisive moment.

The exhibition itself consisted of several hundred very small prints which were part of his scrapbooks, interspersed with a few larger prints of his more famous shots. One problem I find in viewing and judging his work is that I don't know how much the fact that the photos are of bygone eras affect my response to them. There in a crowd of Londoners at the coronation of King George VI is a boy in a cap and raincoat who could be me on my way to school in the 1950's. So my response to the photograph is different to that which I would have experienced had I seen it when first published.

Would I have been a supporter and admirer of his style, or a doubting antagonist who decried his breaking of the normal rules of composition? Probably the latter!

I decided to give myself a little challenge: to go out into the streets of Bradford and see if I could get any shots even remotely like his style. I always find it difficult to point my camera at complete strangers, but do find it slightly easier away from home. I enjoy wandering around foreign markets, while Sue and her friends are occupied in retail therapy, trying to capture candid shots of stall holders and customers. Well Bradford is as near to foreign as you can get in England so that helped.

I only had half an hour to spare so I had to be quick. After one or two unsuccessful shots (of people walking away from me!) I spotted a constant stream of what looked like students coming out of college passing in front of a building. The light walls of the building provided a good backdrop to isolate the figures and expressions.

This first attempt was cropped deliberately to position the 2 outermost figures so that they are walking out of the frame:



It breaks the rules, but doesn't really 'say' anything: its just a pattern of four figures.

This second one could be considered an improvement:



It breaks the rules with two pairs of figures at the edges of the frame and nothing to look at in the middle, but I can give it a lot to say:

The two pairs are separated; they are in different worlds; two older business like figures, two younger students; they apparently have nothing in common; but wait, there is a commonality - both pairs comprise a white and non-white person, so they represent our multi-ethnic society. The younger pair are communicating with each other, the elder pair ignore each other: the younger pair represent the hope of a future confict free multi-ethnic society, the older pair represent current suspicion and uncertainty. What a pity I wasn't thinking about all that when I pressed the shutter!

So onto my final shot:



I'm not sure I can read any profound meaning into this but I do like the geometry of the three figures and I think I just caught it at the right moment that the lad was impressing the two girls with a funny story. Ah well, I suppose it's a little late in life to become a world famous surrealist photographer - it's been done before.