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We think
MoMA
is perfect to
sneak away to on a weekday afternoon for a date with the 20th
Century, spread out as it is in aesthetic splendor on the walls,
pinned with the impeccable eye of Henri Cartier-Bresson in this
wonderfully large
retrospective
of his work.
It was the century of the image, and Cartier-Bresson was the
unerring eye of the century. Cartier-Bresson’s oeuvre has
always been all about the moment, the 'decisive moment' as he
called it: “...the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a
second, of the significance of an event, as well as the precise
organization of forms which give that event its proper
expression.”
L'Aquila
degli Abruzzi, Italy, 1951, Gelatin silver print
His best work
combined reportage, photojournalism, and the news with the visual
sense of the artist and aesthete. Originally trained as a
painter, and perhaps with some of the influence of his early years
with the Surrealists, his work is essentially all about how he
frames the photograph. Always the poet’s awareness of line
and rhythm, a sure strong sense of structure so that as he is
talking about something contemporary and immediate, there is also
the sense of an abstract painting, impeccably composed, that
shines through....the arabesque of curve of staircase, the cadence
of square niches in a wall. To Cartier-Bresson, the sense of
rhythm... “...reinforces the content of a photograph...the relationship between shapes and values.”
Madrid,
1933, Gelatin silver print
He seemed to
be uncannily and perfectly positioned in the unpredictability of
events that unfolded as he traveled the world. What was
certain was that his photographs were in black and white and that
he had a way of sneaking up on his subjects, capturing them
unaware. He had the eye of the hunter, remarking: One has to
tiptoe lightly and steal up to one's quarry; you don't swish the
water when you are fishing.
Cartier-Bresson also said, “There is a lot of talk about camera
angles; but the only valid angles in existence are the angles of
the geometry of composition.” His sense of visual
geometry, innate, immediate, expressed the ideas in the
photograph. The curves and lines lead the eye, inviting
scrutiny and guiding it, giving rigor to the structural
composition, defining the photograph and taking the image beyond
the historical and journalistic into the realm of art.
Nehru and
the Mountbattens, 1948
His
anthropological gaze traversed the globe...he captured Matisse in his
studio, Giacometti like one of his sculptures himself, the
liberation of Paris, America, Spain, the communists in China,
Indian independence. Images that are iconic: a laughing Nehru between the Mountbattens (Nehru was
rumored to have had an affair with Lady Mountbatten), the last
photograph of Gandhi before his death, the post-war denunciation
of a Nazi in Germany. Peter Schjeldahl writing in the New
Yorker says, “...the occasions of historic tumult and human
suffering that presented Cartier-Bresson, always and only, with
chances to achieve beautiful and yet more beautiful pictures.”
And then, after the show, look forward, into the century ahead,
with a renewed sense of the geometries that lie beneath the
surface of our lives....
See:
Henri
Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century, MoMA
See some
of his photos online:
MoMA
Buy
the accompanying catalogue:
Henri
Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century, Peter Galassi
Collect the out-of-print:
Henri
Cartier-Bresson: The Decisive Moment, at abebooks.com
Tags:
photography
art museums
geometry
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