"The only joy in photography is geometry. All the rest is sentiment."

Just picked up the March issue of <U>Vanity Fair</U>. This must be

their unofficial gala photography number: inside are found a twenty-

five page retrospective of the work of Annie Liebovitz; the last

photos made by Herb Ritz - along with a short tribute to him; and -

this is why I bought the magazine - an exclusive interview with

Cartier-Bresson, featuring his portrait by Rene Buri, and a short

selection of the standard HCB images.<P>

 

In the interview (during which I would love to have been a French fly

(complete with beret) on the wall) HCB, ninety-four years old, says a

number of provocative things (of course). The one that caught my eye

most was, "The only thing worthwhile in photography is geometry.

Everything else is mere sentiment." (I'm probably paraphrasing,

because I don't have the interview immediately at hand.)<P>

 

This of course confirms what is starkly obvious in his work - that he

is a strict formalist; no surprize there - but it does stand in stark

contrast to the convention called, sometimes, "concerned

photography", for which Magnum has been known (but which is probably

better ascribed to Eugene Smith, and perhaps, though less directly,

Edward Steichen).<P>

 

My question is, how do you feel about his statement? Is photography

primarily (or exclusively) about "geometry"? And should it be?<P>

 

Please try to refrain from cheap shots at, or low vitriol toward,

HCB - we know already he isn't adored by everyone. What I'm looking

for here are your thoughtful ideas.<P>

 

(By the way, I've scheduled myself for 16 and 18 hour workdays for

the next three days, so I won't be spending much time here in the

forum (though I will try to look in daily). It might be as late as

wednesday before I jump back in with any substantive comments of my

own.)

My own choice of subject matter usually reflects the principles described by Cartier-Bresson. Form is usually paramount.

 

But I often wrestle against this in order to keep my mind open and my muse from fleeing to more receptive pastures. She is fickle and I must make concessions to appease her.

 

Since returning to doing my own b&w processing last year I've experimented more with tonality as the primary element, with form and subject matter relegated to lesser considerations. It's not an easy task, since I still tend to work with recognizable forms as canvases on which to illustrate tonality.<div></div>

I skimmed that article. I don't remember the quote exactly, though I don't think the word he used was "geometry."

 

In any event, I think you're taking him too literally. This is the guy that complained about Adams and Weston shooting rocks while the world was falling apart during WWII, so his thoughts on the matter must be quite a bit more complicated than this out-of-context quote.

The quote is "The only joy in photography is geometry. All the rest is

sentiment." It's used to caption his well-known shot of a man in a

bullring with the sun turning one lens of his glasses into a disk

which echoes a bullseye painted on the barrier through which he

peers. In addition, the outer circle of the bulleye is continued

perfectly by the man's lapel.All the other values in the shot are also

strongly geometrical.........

It's an approach that worked for H. C.B. <P>That doesn't mean it will or should work for everyone or anyone else.

Thanks for the responses so far, guys. Let me clarify. I assumed that, when HCB used the term "geometry", he may indeed have been thinking of forms in their relation to one another; but he was using the word mainly as shorthand for "formal concerns" - ie, the formal concerns of art (or aesthetics) as opposed to overtly <I>social</I> concerns, or "human interest". This is akin, I think, to the premium sometimes placed on style or story-telling technique (again as opposed to social ideas or "human interest") in literature. I'm thinking here of Nabokov's take on Dickens - but you certainly don't need to be familiar with that to get the point. Social concerns or "human interest" vs. "geometry".

HCB frequently irritates (and enjoys irritating) people who have no

formal art training, almost as if it were an unfair advantage to have

spent two years at the Beaux Arts and two more with Andre Lhote. But

afterwards he embraced, first Surrealism, and then Zen, both of which

teach that formal rigor must be acquired only so that you can abandon

it and act on instinct. Over and over he compares photography to sex:

if you have to think about it, you'll never be any good at it.

 

As for HCB not having been a "concerned" photographer: set aside his

three escapes from the Nazi POW forced-labor camps and his work in the

Resistance, and forget his sheltering and mentoring of many young

refugee photographers, Koudelka being the best known. Like the rest of

his first- generation Magnum colleagues he spent most of his post-WWII

career covering revolutions and upheavals, doing some of his best work

in China and India when conditions were at their worst. He always

brought his highly individual sensibility along, though, and you won't

catch him pouring "beauty sauce" on misery, the way Salgado does with

his deliberate evocations of Old Master paintings.

 

If history is a guide, HCB's reputation will take a nosedive after his

death -it's already starting to happen, the rest of his gang are long

gone and are being rediscovered! Then in a decade or so this

deliberate troublemaker will be back, as annoying as ever, and kids

will say "My god, this guy was good!

i agree with what mr. kelly said above. i think hc-b is one of the

best photographer because his photographs are BOTH of human interest

and form...not to mention the decisive moment and full frame factor.

 

hc-b is just playing the contrarian. i believe he mentioned in the

article that conformity is a great evil. put him in a room of

formalists and he'll play the sentimentalist position. get him a

group of journalists and he'll be the artist. how do you think capa

talked hc-b into photojournalism?

 

as always, great thread doug

Disagree. sentimentality is underrated.

In fact, I would go so far as to say sentimental insight is the photography's reason for being, like transportation is auto industry's reason for being. Form and geometry are mere tack on features to serve narrow, dispensible needs needs, like certain cool features that serves car racing.

Which is the more difficult challenge for the photographer? To prick consciences and kick-start emotions, or to render the world aesthetically agreeable?

 

Sentiment comes easy. Ask any successful pornographer, desperate charity fund raiser, or circulation hungry picture-editor. They'll all have a reliable cameraperson at their elbow. It's easy meat, we're easy prey. Give us the time proven photographic catalysts and we'll respond like the combustable, emotional creatures that we are.

 

Aesthetically agreeable? Finding a pleasing geometry? Well that's a trickier proposition. Aesthetically the world's a mess, if it were otherwise then photography would be a breeze with every frame a keeper.

 

Truncate and curtail and reduce an image until it makes the grade and you're left with banality, step back for the grand vista and the geometrical shortcomings cascade back like flotsam on a tide.

 

HCB's a polemicist, he feeds journalists the sensational protein of controversy and they genuflect in return. Nothing wrong there, mortgages to be paid and reputations to be sustained, how could it be otherwise? But underneath it all the man has a point, leave aside for a moment what's worthwhile and ask what's difficult, do that and it's geometry that represents the higher peak.

Chuck, it sounds like you're saying that the subject is always

more important than light or compostiiton. If that were true, then

images of mundane subjects could never succeed, yet we take

successful pictures of objects that the average person - and

more than a few photographers - would walk right by. The secret

is good lighting and 'geometry' . . . . . . and not necessarily in that

order.

Sounds like a "remembrance of mid-term exams past," Doug. Try looking at index magazine sometime.

I think HCB once said something like, get the shot first, and then look for the

geometry later!

I think the quote is complete tosh and HCB knows it. Just because someone has a huge reputation doesn't mean they always talk sense. (Maybe he was doing a wind up?)

This thread was bolloxed at the outset by Doug's getting the quote

wrong, and has gone downhill from there as people posted what they

think they remember the poor guy said somewhere, maybe. "Joy" and

"worthwhile" aren't even close and "sentiment" -which HCB does not

call"mere"- does not equal our word "sentimentality." To a frenchman

it can mean sensibility, feeling, or opinion, or all three

similtaneously, but not usually with any implication of false or

trivial.

 

Cartier-Bresson never made a dichotomy between form and content in

photography: "It is at one and the same time," he wrote in 1968, "the

recognition of a fact in a fraction of a second and the rigorous

arragement of the forms visually perceived which give to that fact

expression and significance." Everybody who has been seriously

involved in photography done outside the studio knows how difficult

that is and how rarely it all comes together. When it does, damn

straight it's a joy.

 

As an old editor I think this forum would be a much better resource

if folks would check half-remembered facts and quotes before posting

them. It's pretty easy to do that now we have

Google.................

<I>'...I think this forum would be a much better resource if folks would check half-remembered facts and quotes before posting them. It's pretty easy to do that now we have Google................."</I><P>But David, where is the fun in that? m yfavorite rmark on these lines comes from musician Richard Thompson about his "fans": "They're worse than professional critics, they're amateur critics!"

It is an interesting thread, but just affirms the essential nature of the observation (variously attributed to Frank Zappa and Elvis Costello) that writing about music (insert: photography) is like dancing about architecture.

 

Worse, I'm certain the quote was stolen from someone else, lost to the mists of time, but Frank or Elvis were merely less stoned and remembered the quip the day after the party.

 

No telling who HC-B actually cribbed his observation about geometry from. Someone more drunk, no doubt.

David Kelly is correct, of course - we can usually count on him for that. I beg your pardon. <P>

 

As you see, I've corrected the thread title. The actual quote is more interesting, in my view, than what I had. <P>

 

My question, however, stands. What does the quote mean, do you think? Is it true? Should it be?<P>

 

As for "half-remembered mid-terms past" - I'm not sure we ever arrive at the Final Exam.

Ellis is right: fact-checking is a drag, but bad information often

takes on a life of its own and is incredibly persistant. Real people

get replaced by media myths, etc. One "fact" I hope nobody checks,

because I don't want to find out it's made up, is the best item in

that VF interview, the bit where he gets Marilyn Monroe to "bless"

his Leica by delicately squatting on it!............

'Please try to refrain from cheap shots at, or low vitriol toward, HCB '

 

Why not? it's always worth poking fun at people who've been put on pedestals. It makes the poker feel happier, the pokee more cautious and it might just make the onlookers re-evaluate their views.

 

My own view of the man is that he's a first class self publicist, like many artists of his generation. He occasionally takes very interesting photographs and I'm properly in awe of anyone who gets to 94 with his marbles intact.

 

But he's a man like any other and a fair target for chucking brickbats at.

"...he's a first class self publicist..."

 

Sounds like some photo.netters we all know and love. The wankers.

All right, I screwed up the quote; and that, apparently, screwed up the thread. I confess that I trusted this would be prevented by my saying at the outset, "I'm probably paraphrasing" - but perhaps these forums work less like conversation and more like written articles. In any case, I should have checked the quote or not posted it at all.

(Then too, it's probably not a good idea to begin a forum discussion and immediately go off to work for a few days.)<P>

 

Anyway, I was hoping we could explore the differences - without necessarily arriving at a conclusion - between the pure aesthetics - pure formalism - of, say, a Ralph Gibson, and the didactic preachiness of a Eugene Smith; and where we might locate HCB among them (perhaps somewhere in the middle).<P>

 

Form and content can't be separated, of course - and fortunately they don't need to be, for the sake of this discussion.