je ne regrette rien

The new photo.net is obviously a challenging venture. In the last hours a number of features went away (the member seniority, the ability to add tags to posts, the posts rating system, just to mention a few). All posts and threads on the photo.net migration process disappeared from the home page. There is progress it's not that fast the owners have an idea of what they want in terms of UX and UI and it takes time There is no point in giving updates (or even answers) if there ain’t any, thus the silence. Better say nothing than have to revert affirmations because things haven’t worked as expected obviously not all features and functions have yet been implemented (I have no clue of the technical team besides Martin Jensen, who works 20% of his time here. He may be on his own or work with others, we don’t know). photo.net will be there at some time, there will be subscriptions and subscriber features and functions. All old accounts will hopefully migrate fully (they are not yet, unsurprisingly). To me, the most important things are content: photos and knowledge and discussions. We shall see.

While there are photographers I am much more interested in and I love more, I think it is worth knowing Cartier-Bresson because of his role in photography in the 20th century. As such I consider him part of history. Since he is so famous, he is often mentioned, mis-referenced and basically not known. I don’t think he’s a street photographer, except for the fact that streets are the “theatre” of a lot of what happens in societies. He photographed what he was, and knowing who he was and where he came from helps to understand his photos better. And I personally think that even if the concept of “the Decisive Moment” is appealing, in modern photography it certainly obsolete.

One of the most important photographers of the 20th century: for his expressive capacity, his narrative ability combined with the eye of the anthropologist, as well as his innovative vision of the world of photographic communication. Yet the commonplace simply sees him as the forerunner of "street photography" and the master of the capture of the decisive moment. I felt the urgent need to look into this narrative, to rectify this generalised simplification, to carefully consider whether it is appropriate to associate Cartier-Bresson merely with fast reaction, with speed, with the highly expressive single photograph. HCB was actually much else and much more: active from 1926 to 1974, the year in which he parted company with Magnum Photos, he not only set out on a path that led him to refine his aesthetics, photographing early in his life, but also painting, but above all confronting artists and creative people of his time. He turned to the documentation of his society, to the description of peoples, and foreign lands, as well as to political and anthropological analysis, and declared that photography alone rarely is able to sustain a narrative. As a young man, he was born in 1908, he travels, lives in Africa, where he photographs, falls seriously ill, even tries to take a wife but does not have the required financial means. He cannot get his rolls of film developed and will be able to review them only view after his return home. True, Henri was born a painter and photographer, but this talent for representation through images is always aimed at documentation. The photograph 'Juvisy, Dimanche sur les bords de la Marne, France 1938', for example, does not have the intent of Manet's 'Déjeuner sur l'herbe', but rather portray, like many other of his images, the emergence of the 'leisure time' of the French working class, based on a law of 1936 that introduced paid holidays. In the volume 'Henri Cartier-Bresson', published at the same time as the large 2014 exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Clément Chéroux describes the photographer's work as the product of a combination of factors: “a certain artistic inclination, an assiduous apprenticeship, a bit of the atmosphere of the period, personal aspirations, many encounters”. He is a young man with a middle-class background who challenges his roots and searches for his own expressive pathways, strongly attracted by surrealism, but also by a militant commitment and the sharing of communist political positions: "anti-colonialism, support of the Spanish republicans, and a deep faith in the need to change life". He was a photoreporter for the communist press, working on social issues, the working-class condition. After the war - he had been a member of the resistance and had been taken prisoner - he was commissioned by the National Movement of War Prisoners and Deportees to make a film to document the return of captives. When he picks up the film camera to record the “trial” of a female prison camp guard, his photographic instincts take over, he suddenly hands the film camera over to his colleague and with the still camera he produces a very strong sequence, which includes this iconic image. His colleague pointed out that the that the same still frame must have been there, in the film sequence, but Cartier-Bresson factually proves that no, it isn't there, that the still photographs are unique. As his friend Ferdinando Scianna recounts in a long and passioned 2019 lecture, HCB had long been searching for what to do in life and how to relate to photography. "Henri was always escaping: from his family, from his bourgeois background, from his destiny, from painting, from himself, and ultimately from photography itself." On the Magnum Photos website we read that, after the Second World War, “Back in France, I was completely lost,” ... “At the time of the liberation, the world having been disconnected, people had a new curiosity. I had a little bit of money from my family, which allowed me to avoid working in a bank. I had been engaged in looking for the photo for itself, a little like one does with a poem." As we can see, bank employment had an undeniable 'appeal' for a long time. Robert Capa, his friend and partner in Magnum, told him: "Don't keep the label of a surrealist photographer. Be a photojournalist. If not you will fall into mannerism. Keep surrealism in your little heart, my dear. Don’t fidget. Get moving!” (from the Magnum website). Henri Cartier-Bresson worked for Magnum, he invented with his partners a new business model, still in place today, which did not include the transfer of ownership of the works but only the granting of the right of use. "They came from the very hard experience of war but also experienced the difficult relationship with publishing" (Scianna). This was the reason for the use of the black frame, which was simply the 'seal' of the framing desired by the photographer, to avoid cropping for layout requirements. Although our Cartier-Bresson is convinced that no photograph can become good by cropping it - even if he did so with "Derrière la gare Saint-Lazare, 1932" - the black border is not in itself an indicator of composition skills, but only the guarantee of the authenticity of the photographer's choice. HCB is not merely the “photographer of the decisive moment”, he is a “storyteller by images”: in his The mind's eye (p. 23-24) he says “What actually is a photographic reportage, a picture story ? Sometimes we have a single image whose composition possesses such vigour and richness, and whose content so radiates from it in such a way, that this single image is an whole story in itself. But this rarely happens. The elements that, taken together, can strike sparks from a subject are often scattered - either in terms of time and space - and bringing them together by force is ’stage management', and, I feel, a contrived. But if one can make photographs of the ‘core’ and also of the sparks that emanate from the subject, this is a picture story. The page serves to reunite the complementary elements dispersed throughout several photographs”. "The picture story requires a joint operation of brain, eye and heart. The aim of this joint operation is to depict the content of an unfolding event and to communicate impressions". Scianna explains this statement, highlighting the need to ensure a balance between perception and knowledge (brain), aesthetics (eye) and feeling (heart). An excess of the brain risks excess rationality, an excess of the eye excessive aesthetisation, an excess of the heart romanticism. Unless one photographs upon a mere technical drive or for photography as an end in itself (it happens), image-making starts from life, from human events, from relationships, from passions, from human beings. It is necessary to research, to understand, to study and above all to be enthusiastic. This is what Cartier-Bresson concretely pursued. He perfectly interpreted his time, the people in "a completely disconnected world" who also had a need to know, to understand how societies were changing after the trauma of the World War II. Newspapers and magazines showed places, people and events that the majority in those years would never have seen in person. Cartier-Bresson focused on Asia and in fact travelled to China, India, Russia, photographed Mahatma Gandhi shortly before his assassination, the Russian people and Chinese peasants. From 1947 to the early 1970s he travelled to all corners of the world and worked for almost all the major international illustrated newspapers. "Images à la sauvette" or "The decisive moment", from 1952, and reissued in 2014, should therefore not be seen and read as a collection of single shots, but rather as a varied portfolio that opens up a perspective on the photographer's enormous anthropological and documentation work in his first 25 years as a photographer. The 'decisive moment', in its actual meaning, Scianna tells us, is not about the real in its elusive moment, but about the photographer's gaze and the moment in which he decides to represent the real by clicking the shutter. The decisive moment is not a passive dynamic to be pursued, but rather a conscious decision about the scene and its unfolding. It is well known that book titles have a commercial function. ‘Capturing the decisive moment' is certainly a catchy inception, evoking speed, quick reactions, scenes that only the photographer has seen and can show us. On the contrary, HCB was someone who maintained that in places and with people it was necessary to live, that the photographer could not be a 'tourist' arriving and leaving. Chéroux calls him a 'visual anthropologist' who develops 'investigations, thematic and transversal, described ... as a "combination of reportage, philosophy and analysis (social, psychological and other)", investigations that open wide windows on a rapidly changing world. Speed and timeliness are therefore not appropriate attributes for an author who has defined the principles of storytelling through images and visual anthropology and who has always independently decided on his narrative line and timing. It is barely worth pointing out that the world today is no longer 'completely disconnected', on the contrary, it is completely interconnected, physically and virtually. It is important to 'be there', even if only with a mobile phone, and often those who 'are there' are not professional photographers, or even anthropologists.

From the release noted of Vuescan: https://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/vuescan.htm It is very well maintained, a new release now and two previous ones towards the end of 2022. It works well and should work well also with old-timer scanners. I use it with my Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED and am happy with it. And the Nikon supported scanners: https://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/nikon.html#scanner-drivers

Very interesting story!

I've had that too (I have a Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED). And it behaved somehow erratically, obviously only on colour film. And then it went away by itself. I'm sorry that I cannot be of further help. In any case it seems to me that the orange cast is exactly the same as yours. I will dig out the picture tomorrow and post it. As said, the cast went away.

There is no personal attack. I have never mentioned any of your qualities or characteristics, which are unknown to me. I've addressed what you have said throughout the thread. Which points at much more than the mere title of the book.

Alan, you’re bashing a book, one single book of over 60 years ago, and a photographer, who moved on since 1955 and died in 2019. You make this one book responsible for ruining the image of a people and a country. One book? With photos of nearly 70 years ago? What about all other books, photos, films, songs, poems, talk shows, news articles, press, you name it? None of us embraced this work as the absolute representation of a people and a country, we are just curious and open minded, and well aware that any work, any work, I repeat, represents a point of view and is more or less biased. We are neither stupid, nor blind Alan. We do not claim any moral high ground, we just love photography and, at least myself, the way it is used and can be used to portray society. And we do not stick to one single work but seek to widen our horizons. This intellectual debate here does not aim to praise anything, it is about sharing ideas, different points of view. Because it is out of diversity that thoughts spring out, that different information and opinions are shared to enrich our thoughts and experiences. Dismissing The Americans as a useless, unfounded mercantile work by a legal alien, which is your argument throughout this thread - and you haven’t even seen the book - sounds like a purely ideological stance, which is intellectually impoverishing. Exactly the opposite of the purpose of this photo.net section and of this thread.

No.

Now I understand where you come from. In the "old" (and decadent) continent it's a bit different, even if we do our best to do our part.

That media in general shock societies is out of question. I was thinking of the specific medium "book", which works differently than other media, as we know.

Sam, I don't know the American society that well to be able to judge so I'll talk about societies in general, but don't you think that there is a fundamental difference between then and now? back then the hypocrisy was to hide unpleasant social facts, to present an idyllic picture of society; today there is an explosion of truths (alternative facts) and the hypocrisy is to claim that they are actually true, even if the fabricator very well knows that they are not?

Good quote, offers some interesting food for thought. In a previous post I questioned whether there are other (modern) examples of photo books creating a stir in society. We agreed that Frank’s book appalled and shocked certain circles because it showed an America different from the mainstream narrative. Today that wouldn’t be possible: In 1959 there was one narrative. Today we have many narratives and many news, we know “everything” (quotation marks on purpose), often real-time. All existing narratives are in the public domain and certainly we do not lack communication channels, bubbles and debates. I completely disagree with the notion of hypocrisy. Societies then and now perceive themselves in a certain way, be it because of the media mainstream, be it because of political communication, be it because of social media bubbles (today). The difference between then and now, in my opinion, is that there is no “watershed” today. Everything is fluid, sometimes undifferentiated.

Peculiar, because this photo, strange enough, raises some feeling of "deja vu" in me.

Really fantastic. The sequence is perfect, its flow is perfect, even the very difficult combination of colour and black-and-white photographs not only does not disturb the rhythm, but also contributes extraordinarily well. Wow!

I understand, but I think that - at least from where I stand - it's nearly impossible to compare the two bodies of work. Of Frank I have 83, there are hundreds by HCB. Let's say that the comparison of the bodies of work is very hard and that the "famous" book of RF is still The Americans. Still I believe that there are stylistic and visual affinities. I am not completely sure that HCB didn't stick at least a little bit to his impressionistic influence, affecting his journalistic, or maybe anthropological, vocation. I agree. I must say that I started from paper books, which gave ME an overview of the works of the two. Clearly it is impossible, at least for me, to consider a body of work in its entirety, browsing the internet. The photos I found and selected were just an attempt to sample to support my feelings. Probably also impossible to transmit my gut feeling over the bodies of work working remotely and with the fragmentation of the work presented on line. I fully see where you come from, but we are again in the trap of looking at single photos rather than at samples of the body of work of RF and HCB. If we go along the line of your interpretation of "Public park - Cleveland, Ohio", which I do not share but I respect, there are HCBs pictures of the dispossessed (Mexico, 1934, La Villette, Paris, 1929). I see calm in "Public park - Cleveland, Ohio", a man resting from the heat. And if Frank wanted this perspective, the man in the shadow of the tree, the face clearly shown, the shoes, the funny socks, cleanly shaven and his hair dressed, he probably didn't have any other possibility than leaving the trunk of the tree exactly where it is. What do both approaches have in common in my opinion? A similar approach to visual anthropology of a western society. Apart from the difference in preciseness and neatness, Frank I feel being a bit more ironic than Cartier-Bresson. The Americans does not give me any feeling of aggressiveness at all. Just a straight visual representation of a society, from angles the same society was not used to.

My basis: The huge book on Henri Cartier-Bresson by Clement Chéroux published after the great retrospective exhibition of 2014 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris (which I had the chance to visit); The book by Frank we are widely discussing. Cartier-Bresson was precise and neat, with very little exceptions. He started painting, let's not forget, and was influenced by impressionists. Frank's photos are generally grainy and muddy. I don't know yet if HCB proposed fully tilted horizons as RF in Mississippi River, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I'll point out a few pictures, which in my view are visually the same. Sure, I have access to a much wider body of work of HCB compared to RF and his book is thematically much more focused, with less pictures, all about the US. I hope this helps supporting my remark. RF: Public park - Cleveland, Ohio and HCB: Trieste, 1933, Marseille, France, 1932 (HCB proposed quite a few "sleepers"); RF: Public park - Ann Arbor, Michigan and HCB, Sunday on the River Seine, 1938; RF: Store window - Washington, D.C. and HCB, Camagüey, Cuba, 1963; RF: City hall - Reno, Nevada and HCB, Galeries Lafayette, Paris, 1968; RF: Cafeteria - San Francisco and HCB, Brooklyn, New York, 1947. Now, I don't know whether this is by chance, or if there are some common "approaches to perception" by documentary photographers, but I see stylistic similarities. Photos which convey the same feeling, at least to me. And it's not because approximately the same subjects are photographed, or the same actions. Obviously I don't refer to pictures made in China or pictures of different periods. The selected ones have overall visual similarities. Except for the neatness, precision, and muddiness.

Excellent article, which summarises a lot of what was mentioned in this thread. People could be "surprised" (as Bruce Davidson said) of scenes they were not used to. In 1958(59) and in a booming socioeconomic scenario, with relatively traditional communication means. In 2023, 63 years later, with an overflow of information and channels, we shouldn't be surprised anymore and used to contradictions in society, e.g.: between the bustling NYC or San Francisco or Las Vegas and the remote and underdeveloped backcountry, to be found everywhere in the world.

Josh, you make very important points. Personally, even though I think that Frank was very good at finding and getting his pictures, it’s a book that wouldn’t go very far today. I find it close to the style of Cartier-Bresson but less neat and precise - the craft that you mention. But that must have been intentional, Frank’s editorial, advertising and fashion work must have been “neat and precise”. You say “unfamiliar style” and that’s an important thing to say. I believe that the patina of time also plays a role. Nevertheless, there are very powerful photos in the book, in what they tell us. And, finally, it strikes me how many important photographers are explicitly or implicitly taking Frank as a reference: Meyerowitz, Winogrand, Eggleston, etc. I consider The Americans a means to know more about the developing history of documentary photography, certainly a milestone, but also a work of a past far away.

Very hard to tell.

Correct. Also generating the well recognisable Dunning-Kruger effect. in some cases there is also ideological pre-judice.

What's the point in trying to convince Alan Klein? Arguments he has brought up none, he has seen Franks' pictures here and there, but certainly has no comprehensive view over the book and its context. He talks about a "political position" on America but does not explain on what grounds the position is political. In fact he has not substantiated none of his statements, and he is not willing to go beyond his adamant "I don't like it and the title". So be it, honestly, why bother? It's just a waste of time. I'd rather move on.

@AlanKlein I understand.

Hi Alan, quick question: do you own the book? Or do you have a quick access to the full body of work in it? Thanks.

I had a more careful look and in fact there are several unsettling ones, but I don’t find them judgmental: Parade - Hoboken Candy store - New York City New York City Rooming house - Bunker Hill Barber shop through screen door - McClellanville, South Carolina Mississippi River, Baton Rouge, Louisiana Crosses at scene of highway accident - US 91, Idaho Chinese cemetery - San Francisco. and the ones you point out @samstevens. In any case I don’t see these unsettling ones as biased or even uncommon.