The term that symbolizes Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photography is at once elusive, mysterious, alluring, and quite possibly misunderstood; at least I have difficulty understanding it. I have read about his approach to photography, have seen many of his work in books, listened to one of the rare interviews that he granted, and still have been quite puzzled to reconcile his photographs and the “The Decisive Moment.” The difficulty I have is the way the idea is generally presented as HCB knowing when to release the shutter. Think about it for a moment, remember all his photographs that you have seen; what are the chances of him being that lucky all the time? The more I looked at his photographs and read about his life and work, the more I thought there must be a different way of seeing this idea of “the decisive moment.”
The way it has been presented, explicitly or implicitly, creates an image of HCB in my mind as a man with his Leica, taped with black tape to cover the chrome, waiting with his finger on the shutter release until The decisive moment strikes. Then he moves on to the next photograph. Such an extraordinary serendipity, isn’t it?
Now, I have not studied his life, his frames of negatives, and other intimate details of his photography, but this explanation sounds very far fetched to me. If this view is indeed correct, then he would be one patient and lucky photographer. I think the odds of him being this extraordinarily lucky is equally extraordinarily slim, and the notion of one patient photographer waiting until something to happen is quite unlikely.
I am sure a scholar who studied his life and work is far more qualified to interpret what “decisive moment” means. But, without finding an explanation that will satisfy me, I cannot simply accept the idea at its face value. If we detach the decisive moment idea from the explanation on the street for a moment, it will be dangling. Now, let us find another place to hang it, not on the photographer, but on the photograph.
Photographers, including HCB, aim their cameras to frame something in the world to take a picture of that thing. The world is filled literally an infinite number of frames, but most will result in being an ordinary icon of that thing photographed. But, then, there are moments when a ray of light strikes at a particular angle, a man jumps over a puddle, a bicyclist enters the frame, a dog stops to scratch its ear, then at that moment that ordinary icon of a piece of the world is converted to a photograph. That may be the decisive moment that converts the ordinary to extraordinary, but it happens in the world not at the fingertips of the photographer. It is a visual delight, a strong statement, a memorable photograph.
In an earlier post, I proposed some attributes that I look for in a photograph: message, choice, intention, technique, and printed photograph. In fact, I started thinking about this post as I was writing the earlier one. I thought, and still do, that the decisive moment is the confluence of the message, choice, and intention attributes. The photographer decides what to show in the frame, this intention is expressed and carried through his or her other work, to convey a particular message. This, of course, is a continuous and complex process that starts with the photographer deciding to be at a particular place, continues through the photographing of the subjects he or she chooses, to the selection of the frames to print, and finally producing the print.
Considering the above, I think the decisive moment means more a choice process that selects the one or ones from among many frames that manifests a character that makes a frame a photograph. Therefore, as such, the decisive moment is not a moment when a photograph is necessarily taken but it is manifest in the presented work. I would like to interpret it as HCB choosing a particular frame over several others because in that frame something happened at “The decisive moment” making it a complete photograph rather than an icon of a moment in time. For a person who walked the streets of Paris with his camera in hand, this is a vision of a deliberate person making many choices in one outing and choosing a final print because it conveys the decisive moment reconciles the idea and the works of HCB for me.
Otherwise, would he not have called the concept “The serendipitous moment” instead of “The decisive moment?” But again, let us not forget Louis Pasteur’s wisdom: “Chance favors the prepared mind.”
Mike Zeis says
After reading the excerpt posted on the page linked below, it seems clear that HCB’s concept of the decisive moment has to do with patience and judgement. Just about all of the times I hear or read “the decisive moment” used, the context is serendipity or luck. Indeed, my own understanding of the decisive moment was from exactly that context, until I tried to track it down to the source. The way I read it in this brief piece, HCB emphasizes the *unlucky* aspects of a photograph that are or should be completely under the control of the shooter. In fact, within control of the shooter is not taking the shot if it is not complete. From the excerpt, the one and only mention of the decisive moment: “…..if the shutter was released at the decisive moment, you have instinctively fixed a geometric pattern without which the photograph would have been both formless and lifeless.” (That’s a pretty high bar, isn’t it?)
http://fotoroom.co/decisive-moment-henri-cartier-bresson/
A. Cemal Ekin says
Mike, good to hear from you. Your future comments, if any, should appear without waiting for an approval.
HCB’s “decisive moment” is indeed one of the misunderstood concepts in photography, but not because of him. Writers in many venues attributed that “moment” to something inside the photographer’s mind whereas the “moment” is actually external to begin with. Something(s) happen in the external world that may bring the elements together, the slight stretch of the neck or crouching may help the photographer but not “to create” that moment. And, luck may indeed be a part of the process. One of his most famous photographs, Gare Saint-Lazare with the man jumping over a puddle was shot through a crack in the fence wide enough for his lens only; he could not see the “decisive moment” happening. In fact it is one of the few he cropped because on the left side was an unsightly wall!
Finding a frame and waiting might have produced some, maybe even many of his photographs but the ones we recognize as the representative samples of the decisive moment had a narrow window of time. A little longer wait would have shifted the shadows and the shaft of light thus changing the moment significantly. It would not surprise me a bit that he waited with camera in hand at a location for something to happen but after a while the confluence of things that created the decisive moment disappeared and he walked away.