Reviewing the catalog for the recent exhibit Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Modern Century presents at least two dilemmas. First, Cartier-Bresson’s work is of such significance and mastery that anything more than adulation seems presumptuous. Second, street photography and the sensibilities of street photographers have changed remarkably since Cartier-Bresson made his most significant images. Visual puns and odd juxtapositions with subjects that eschew the clichés of grittiness and candor or that make intense use of color constitute recent themes in street photography. The richness and break with convention seen in recent street work marks an era when notions of straight documentary photography are under scrutiny. One cannot look at many of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs without hearing the chiding voice of the postmodernist—his depiction of people “as they are” is sometimes marked with a romantic feeling and at times even a primitivism that is now suspect for some. Many artists avoid this stance by adopting, consciously, or not, a visual language that discards the deliberate composition that Cartier-Bresson helped define. Still, for the aspiring photographer who participates in the electronic forum, there is so much access to previous work via image search engines that one cannot honestly take any stance as a naïf. Accordingly one must account for Cartier-Bresson’s work in some way, even if one chooses to work in reaction to his approach or style. The exhibition catalog for the recent retrospective of his work at SFMOMA, Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Modern Century, offers such an accounting, establishing the paramount relevance of Cartier-Bresson to anyone working in street photography.
Peter Galassi, the show’s organizer, acts as the guide for the viewer. Galassi holds the position of chief curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, a post that affords an authoritative view of the connections between images and photographers. His able prose in the introductory essay to the catalog recounts not only the significance of the images in the catalog themselves but their relation to the history of the medium. However, these relationships are perhaps not as important to the aspiring street photographer as the subtle details about Cartier-Bresson’s life that reveal how the master worked. Galassi’s introductory essay to the catalog is rich in biographic detail that demonstrates the skills that converged in Cartier-Bresson, enabling him to make compelling images with such consistency.
From Galassi we learn that the photographer was born into an upper middle class family. This position afforded Cartier-Bresson two privileges. He was allowed to pursue the study of painting from an early age. Before he picked up a camera he learned to be deliberate in the organization of space between the four corners of the image. Second, as a member of the upper middle class he was taught hunting, developing the patience and skill to stalk and shoot game. Even as he absorbed these crafts he reacted to received notions of culture and work, associating with surrealism as a painter and working professionally as a photographer—a medium that was then an upstart and enjoyed lesser standing in the art world. Despite this rejection of tradition, when one reviews the catalog for The Modern Century these skills, the ability to stalk and hunt, and deliberate composition, show their force throughout his work.
The exhibition website offers much of the flavor of the catalog, organizing images by geography and chronology. Even as early as 1932 Cartier-Bresson was capturing arresting images, making good use of the small portable cameras that were then new developments in the medium. Perhaps one of his most reproduced images is the famous jumper behind the railway station, Behind the Gare Saint Lazare (1932). In this image we see the triple mirroring of the jumper, his image in the water, and the leaping figure on the poster in the background, reproducing the motion of the jump albeit in the opposite direction. The image is at home in the canon of street photography as much now as it was in the last century. In a time when much street work adopts a wry cynicism and black humor the mirroring of the jumper with the poster reveals that Cartier-Bresson anticipated visual puns and use of images within images nearly 100 years ago. What is more, the framing is so deliberate, the elements so perfectly chosen, that the image chides the aspiring photographer. Before one attempts to build on or mimic the studied chaos of someone like Bruce Gilden one must learn to choose and frame deliberately and carefully. Patient waiting and working out the composition are the silent supports to the apparently ephemeral nature of the leaping silhouette.
Moving forward approximately a decade, Cartier-Bresson continues to reveal graphic significance through the combination of what appear to be disparate components of a scene. A shot taken from a boat uses the prow against a bridge in the background to mark time as if on a clock face in Torcello, Near Venice (1953). The running figure of the woman, almost reaching the cover of the trees on the right, adds a sense of urgency that makes the metaphor complete. The teaching of Torcello, Near Venice is that first photographers must notice potential combinations of elements within their viewfinder. What cannot be seen cannot be captured, but when the photographer takes chances and plays with elements in view deliberately, meaning may emerge. The unlikely arrangement makes reference to the surrealism that influenced Cartier-Bresson. Galassi aptly describes this approach as the “. . .juxtaposing [of] two shards of reality without explanation, unleashing unpredictable currents of meaning between them.”
Near the opposite end of his career Cartier-Bresson made substantial journeys through the United States, capturing images that reveal the alienation and social dislocations of the country during the post-war decades. These images demonstrate an ability to see the cultural juxtapositions and gestures that now fall under the handy rubric of “social landscape photography.” Cartier-Bresson offers a view of Native American women standing against the backdrop of a storefront in Gallup, New Mexico (1971). The vacuous stare of a mannequin in the storefront evokes an empty consumerism that stands in stark contrast to the intense gaze of the women in the foreground. Upon closer inspection we see that the mannequin is attired in a silver concho belt, a standard piece in the repertoire of Native American silver work, and a faux-provincial dress. The doll imitates the women in the foreground even as the women are attempting to conform to the style dictates of the larger culture, replete with oversized hair curlers. In this single frame Cartier-Bresson provides a quick assay of cultural appropriation and power. He admonishes us to understand the culture we depict so as to better elucidate these dynamics. Even as he captures a view that is sympathetic to the situation of the subjects depicted we sense the hunter’s eye. The prey is not game but instead the correct arrangement of human subjects that speaks to the larger society.
The exhibition catalog collects some 300 images that span Cartier-Bresson’s career and the places he worked, revealing over and over his near-singular consistency in producing superlative work. The volume is available from the SFMOMA online store.
