Belgian Kids in Kensington Gardens (these kids weren't posing, so much as poseur-ing. I took several images, but they weren't aware of my presence...(too taken up with themselves, I think).

The photo is having a noticeable red cast.

MD, does Tri-X Pan have a red color cast, perhaps ? :-) Are we judging RVB jpegs, or a black and white photograph ?

 

Tony, well... I think it's an amazing shot. So many people said exactly what I would say about the connectedness of the youngsters. All I can add is that the "couples" take the central spot, as if they were heroes, whereas the 2 lonely guys at left and right seem a bit less fortunate. As this age, I was very much like the guy on the far right, always alone, and envying the "heroes" who found themselves loving and loved. So I guess this picture touches me personally in a slightly different way. :-)

 

I agree as well, that the far background here is an important context. You had to work within a 2 x 3 format ratio anyway, but I think we don't need more of the ground in front, whereas the trees etc let us know that this happens in a parc, where other people carry on with their own life, almost as if love (in this park, or perhaps in life in general?) was an unimportant or a rather "casual" thing.

 

Finally, I hope people who look at this POW truly realize what's the chance to ever find a group of youngsters so well placed and doing so many interesting things within a single camera frame. This picture reminds us, that a photograph is a bit like a one frame movie...

Tony,

this is a great photograph - I kept coming back to it...

now that I've looked at it numerous times, I find the

framing to be a wee bit too tight (nitpicking only).

Thanks to the elves for getting attention on your work

I enjoyed your portfolio (especially the 70ies images) a lot

Yes, looking at the scene again and playing around with the far background in or out I can see that it needs to be there. Perhaps just as critical as capturing the 'decisive monment' is the 'decisive compostion'. My camera would have naturally gravitated downwards. Including the entirety of the subjects while also framing the horizon shows some real skill and understanding. Not bad for spontaneous 'street photography'.

Tony, is this posed???

Sorry, couldn't resist. Great image. Love the overall tonality. There are many stories within that frame that many of us can correlate with out own younger years. And you gotta love those hats...

 

Congrats man...

What? it aint digital?

 

Lovely shot. Timeless. I wander what those kids would say now if they would look at it.

Great picture, Tony. Congratulations and well done! :-)

 

I agree with the comments above that Street Photography is generally underappreciated at photo.net, not withstanding the Leica and Street and Doc (and Wedding) forums.

 

10 rolls of Tri-X in your pockets, a Nikon or Leica and a fast 50 or 35. Happy days for photography, now bygone, alas...

If they were posing, there'd be no point in taking the photo. A photo is just the visible end result of the process of understanding the scene. Setting it up - for "pure" street photography at least - is anathema to the whole idea of going out with a camera intending to photograph strangers.

I know we're not supposed to discuss reasons for selecting a particular image for a POW, but one would hope that the obvious strengths of an image would be the main reason for it's selection. We can nitpick about the tight crop or the reddish cast, but the focal point of the discussion for me is that with enough practice and talent, you can get a street shot that is so complete and clean that it does look posed (although you'll never convince me that they could have been such good actors that they could get the expressions right, along with the poses . . . and all at the same time.)

 

Tony you mention that there would be no point in shooting it if it was, but unfortunately, the shot of the sailor celebrating the end of WWII referenced above is evidence to the contrary, given its status in the history of photography. I had always assumed it was a candid shot and was disappointed to find out otherwise, just as my enjoyment of this composition is based on my confidence that this one was shot as found, rather than created. An understanding and appreciation of the process contributes to the enjoyment of art. At least it does for me.

Tony, hope you know my comment about being posed was a joke. I read your comment above mine it not being posed.

Congratulations, Tony, to your third picture of the week! I have admired your work for years, and a visit of your portfolio should be a must for any newcomer to the site. This shot has always been one of my favorites in your portfolio, and when I saw it this week on the front page, I could hardly believe it hadn't been picture of the week before ;-)

This photograph aced the test of time - the ultimate juror. There isn't much to nit-pick so relaxed we can admire maturity of the mind behind the camera, follow the process of making the image and reflect on many questions usually embedded in a good image. Regards.

Definitely an interesting image from both a visual and human interest point of view. Some of Bresson's best work had a curious energy or tension to them. There is an almost bucolic atmosphere to this image, a "Saturday in the Park" sort of feel.

This is a good example of the "nice catch" category, one of those photos that has adequate visual interest strictly in the composition and timing. The rest of its appeal arises from the nostalgia factor: specifically, the sentimental associations we attach to the 70's and, more generally, the evocations of transience and mortality that good candid photos from bygone times always produce.

 

Otherwise I don't get a lot from this; I don't see the human drama, penetrating observation or unique style that some apparently do. Don't get me wrong, I see those things in some of this photographer's other images, particularly the last one of his that was POW.

That's exactly right, Beau, I was thinking along those lines myself. At the time this was taken, 1975, the "decisive moment" had come and gone: the focus of those artists shooting in the street had shifted to more abstract, more random, more color, more anything away from the tight formalism associated with the photographers in the '50's who had commanded attention by using the sort of internal cues in the frame that Henri Cartier-Bresson made popular. The Japanese abstracted even more, and the Americans had the very different work of Winogrand and even Klein (although he had done his interesting work n the 50's and 60's). What I see here is a nice, safe picture that has the assembled tableaux that that been popularized 20 years earlier, but little else. Kids in a park are after all kids in a park- little new there. If I were looking at this without any other information I would assume this was the work of a young person without a real photographic voice, as indeed it seemed to be. There's nothing wrong with that of course.

Beau and Andy have a point... up to a point.

 

I suppose if I'd been in a war zone, or a member of the Japanese avant gard I might have made a different picture. But I wasn't and I didn't.

 

As a picture of a group of kids sitting on a park bench being cool, I thought it was reasonably successful. There's an element of a deliberate pose being taken in this pic, as if a few seconds later they might have all swapped legs and arms and assumed another pose. Almost like they were preening themselves. I caught them before they moved onto their next figure.

 

But I can see the point that there isn't enough movement in it, enough vitality. On the other hand, that was not the scene: the scene was dudes and their women doing the promenade in Kensington Gardens, one summer's afternoon in London.

 

There's a cameraderie in the picture, from the boy at the left seemingly quite content with his being on his own, to the friendly chatting of the first couple and the amorousness of the second. Lastly, we have the odd man out at the far right, looking peeved about something (perhaps his missing girlfriend?)... just about the only tension in the whole thing. It's not a picture of tension, rather harmony, with just a hint that all might not be well on the right.

 

Everything is down pat. The chair, the trees, the people sitting, even the dustbin in the background. Hardly a shot that I could have died photographing, or that would have made the front page of Life, but a reasonably competent presentation of what one group of people was doing, one afternoon in London, thirty years ago.

 

Andy, I have to take exception to your statement that "the decisive moment had come and gone". You miss the very nature of the "decisive moment": there's always another one around the corner in any situation, and every situation has one... you just have to be able to see it. This is as close to a universal truth as I can think of. It's not just photography, or even art: decisive moments belong to sports, academia, politics and every single field of human endeavour or activity. Regarding photography, if the decisive moment is dead, then what have we all been doing these thirty-something years with our cameras, a time well after (you claim) it had already been interred and bypassed? I mean, why bother?

 

Nice theorizing, though. Sounds like something they tried to tell me in art school.

 

Problem was: I didn't believe them (and neither should you).

This latest turn in the discussion reminds me of something that I always hate in these discussions: criticizing a work for what it isn't instead of appreciating what it is. Look, some people get paid to go shoot all over the world; they have the advantage of being able to capture unique and interesting subjects. I have nice pics of Italy because I lived there for a long time. Others are of an experimental mind and take experimental pics. You photograph what you are exposed to or what you are able to expose yourself to. This picture isn't avant garde or advanced in that sense (although I would argue that it is very advanced in the compostional sense). But, he was shooting in a park in the city and captured what he saw ... PERFECTLY. That's not so easy to do. So, it's not abstract and maybe - to some - it's not exciting or dangerous. So what?! He captured a moment in time with style and clarity and grace. If that's not good photography, then I don't know what is.

There's no way to criticize a masterpiece. Great stuff here. I never shoot street photos (not to upset people) and because of my damn slow DIGITAL camera :))

Nice discussion where you can read words from some of the old masters of (photo.net) photography. I'm too young to say something wise. We were living in a deep furious communism that time, BTW. And I was not yet born.

POSEUR-ING...YES.....THIS PIC. CAN SHOW ALL ABSURD OFF SITUATION...FANNY OR NOT...?

Awesome image! Its been said before, but this really is street photography at its finest.

 

Tony, I think your explanation and impression of the subject matter is right on the money. I completely agree with everything you've said about this image. I think it was necessary to reinforce the fact that this image is unposed. But its time to shut up now, and let the image speak for itself. I mean that in the best possible and most respectful way. Let each viewer draw his/her own informed conclusion whatever it may be.

 

The image needs no further justification. It simply is.

 

Michael J Hoffman

What Andy seems to be saying is that this photograph fails because it is out of fashion. It's out of fashion because it's not opposed to the formalism of HCB. That by 1975 more mature street photographers had already put aside the decisive moment and had gone on to something more contemporary. Tony is open about being a fan, even a copier of HCB. I think the danger with HCB is once you've seen him he is hard to forget. Being a copier of anyone, even the greatest, is guaranteed to bar you from your own individual path of expression even though great artists have always borrowed and stolen bits and pieces from others on their journey.

Andy - do you believe that if this was a photograph in the style of Klein or Winogrand or the Japanese abstractionists it would be better or riskier? Wouldn't that just be getting in lock step with another collective idea of what is stylish at the time like the bell-bottoms in Tony's shot?

"...mature street photographers had already put aside the decisive moment and had gone on to something more contemporary." - Kent

I know what Andy's point was. I just feel that there is nothing as contemporary as a decisive moment. In another moment there'll be another one coming along. We're in the middle of one right now.

If you meant that this picture, and other similar pictures from the time, are out of date (even for thirty years ago), I still don't see the point. These kinds of shots are hard to take. You wear out a lot of shoe leather. You make lots of mistakes. There are many frustrations. I say this not as a devotee of a particular style of photography, nor even in particular defence of this picture, but on behalf all all photographers who take pictures of a certain "genre", whatever that genre is: style is something art historians study. One might not like a style, or a photograph in a certain style, but one should not criticise a photograph simply because it does not fit the mould made in a classroom, or a textbook written by academics.

There are many, many books about HC-B's work. They are - almost to a publication - completely over the top. The old man himself was much more sanguine about his talents, and hated the way art aficianados read too much into his work. What HC-B said about his concept, "the decisive moment", could be expressed in a couple of paragraphs. It was the academic art world that turned it into volume after volume of philosophy. It is well-known he was contemptuous of that.

His guiding principle was to capture the scene all in one moment, with minimal darkroom correction, no cropping and little commentary (by him). Photography was a mind exercise for him. Its objective? Truth. The photograph was just the trophy. Commentators, relying on the fascination impressionable wannabees (like me) had for everything about the man, wrote up this simple idea into a way of life. They took his reticence for talking about his work as a sign that there was more too it than he was prepared to admit. They were wrong. There was nothing more than the image on paper for him, a throwaway item that proved he'd "been there".

Having said all that, I doubt that there will ever be any photographer as infuriatingly talented yet as reticent to talk about it as HC-B. Even he didn't realise that. He thought he was a better painter than photographer. I also believe it would be difficult to find any work as "mature" as his (what a terrible choice of word that was). His work will be appreciated as far into the future as you care to look, long after the Japanese Expressionists and the German Discombobulators have disappeared, even from art school lecture rooms. There was a lightness about his work that is not capable of imitation. You either have it or you don't. I don't, that's for sure. What he made his life's work - the search for truth - will never be out of fashion. That is what Cartier-Bresson was all about. And it is what we, as photographers, as human beings, should try to emulate. The rest is, quite simply, academic.

Never been to art school so I have an easy time ignoring whatever is fashionable in academia.

 

When I think about a photo like this I just go by the image. And yes, in a sense I do think that the HCB influence in street photography was nearly over by the mid-70's and, yes, I think it was a good thing that it was. As Tony knows, much too much tripe was attributed to his pictures, which became locked up in his particular desire to use one lens, middling shades of grey and reluctance to focus accurately. For let's be honest, many of his prints are grittingly haphazard in exposure and focus (I saw the recent big retrospective in person). The look of the American shooters that followed him was much looser, both in subject matter and in form-- just think of a Jeff Jacobsen frame if you don't want to think about Winogrand, or Eugene Richards' 21 and 24mm lens framing, all of which avaided the cloying cuteness (I am betraying myself now, I find HCB irritating) of the lined up elements that are the essence of the decisive moment way of thinking.

 

So I stand by my thoughts about this photo-- an homage to a book something that deserved to be closed.

Ah, the search for truth. That is what I wish we were all about but sadly my friend it is out of fashion and I think it will be a very long time before it comes back in style if it ever does. People do not want to search for the truth these days so much as they want to shove their version of it down our throats.

 

I do not suppose you are going to easily tire of hearing that this photo (like so many others in your portfolio) is simply brilliant. It is hard for me to decide if your work is an inspiration to continue with my own efforts or to simply chuck the cameras in disgust at my own lack of ability to capture anything half as elegant. It reminds me of the frustration I suffered as a child when attempting (and failing miserably) to assemble one of those messy plastic and glue model airplane kits. Never mind the frustration of getting so much older than I was when this photograph was taken. If only I had known about sloppy abstraction back then, I might have been so much happier. I am looking for new work from you by the way, or have you suddenly decided to become a painter?

 

I am imagining for some reason that the people (I keep resisting the temptation to call them children) in this photograph represent different countries or at least different subsets of society. Of course we (the United States) are the ones with our hands up someones knickers. It would be hard to say who would be represented by the other person because the possibilities are endless. We might say England, since they are our best buddies and closest allies. I am certain that the guy on the right represents all of the people in the world who are just plain fed up with the whole deal. I doubt that that group could be categorized as a single country or nation. The guy on the far left is like all the people who just laugh at us for our own stupidity or who think life in general is a big joke. The guy in the far background must be our enemy, totally out of reach and free to move around as he pleases. The guy sitting on the back of the bench near the center of the frame is greed personified. There is no telling what he might do in pursuit of money. The other figure facing away from us represents everyone who chooses to gladly ignore all this nonsense happening in the world. There is so much going on behind our heroes back and he is totally unaware of what is happening anywhere. Anyway it is an incomplete line of thought but at least I am thinking about something.

 

I am not sure I fully appreciated what Andy was saying on the first go around and maybe not on the second. I guess it is the fact that influences change over time and people move on to the next great thing or idea pretty fast. People tell me that is what makes for progress but one would think that universal truths and the pursuit of those truths would be a bit more durable or at least not be dismissed so easily.

andy.

 

one thing we agree on is the fact that HCB established a monumental standard of documentary photography a long time ago which means precious little to a current art dealer. standards are old. talent is new. galleries have to sell. etc.

 

a few web-clicks ago, i couldn't help but conclude that anyone with a photo site essentially un-viewable without "flash" is seriously disconnected with the visual art he's trying to display. whilst i appreciate the contemporaneity of the gesture, the end result, much like your condemnation of the "decisive moment," carries as much insight and value as a teenager's rebellion against math, history, reading and being nice to his little sister. surely, we can also agree that the teenager hasn't had enough experience to understand, among many other things, how capturing an archetypal social moment that's decently framed and reasonably in-focus rivals winning the kentucky derby. actualy, a picture like the one above is just shy of the triple crown (the high ratio of backs facing lens equates to the donkey who nails you in the unforgiving belmont stretch run).

 

the artistic alternatives you propose may seem more complex in theory, but they're relatively trivial in execution--well, at least in my experience. ultimately, tony is a photographer's photographer and that's just about the biggest compliment a non-nature shooter can receive.