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They captured the essence of what it means to be human and made magic of the everyday. Some of the most important photographers to have ever picked up a camera speak to Glass. Reportage photography is, in its essence, a capturing. A capturing of the essence of a culture, an age, a situation, a zeitgeist, an idea, or a multitudinous mix of all of these things combined and distilled into one concise, almost visceral, image depicting the experience of being alive in this world.
It is a transmutation of a seemingly mundane or everyday scenario into a powerful and telling image. Reportage images, or street photography as it is also known, seem to strip away all artifice and somehow always represent the ‘truth’ of a scenario, regardless of the context.
It is almost impossible to define what makes a good reportage photograph; there are essentially no rules and for many years during its nascent period in the late 1800s and early 20th Century, it was pioneered by only a small handful of renegade photographers such as Scotsman John Thomson and Frenchman Eugène Atget, who dismissed the use of photography as a means to endorse the wealthy classes and instead pursued their own interests. For Atget this was a love for documenting abandoned or empty buildings and streets; for Thomson, an ardent anthropological study of people and civilisations.
It was, somewhat ironically, the dawn of the surrealist movement in the 1920s that brought about a voracious appetite for “real” images with a chorus of “Crush tradition! Photograph things as they are!” The dawn of the street photography age arrived with fervour, along with its most famous proponent, a young and shy Frenchman, Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Born into a wealthy and privileged family, Cartier-Bresson contradictorily spent much of his life capturing images that challenged wealth inequality (whilst simultaneously using his family’s wealth as a means to further his early personal projects), immortalising the seemingly ordinary as extraordinary commentaries on society and humanity. He co-founded the hugely influential Magnum photography agency (alongside his mentor and friend Frank Capa) and went on to become one of the most important and influential street photographers of all time. His photographs remain a masterclass in art of reportage.
His ethos, famously known as “the decisive moment”, became a mantra for subsequent generations. “There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture,” he told the Washington Post in 1957. “Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone for ever.” It is also well known that Cartier-Bresson was highly disparaging towards colour photography.
Though his successors have often departed from his concepts in significant ways, that same challenge always remained: how to capture something that happens in the very moment that it takes place. How to capture the most fleeting glimpses of life and the conflicting qualities of utter normality and huge profundity that those moments possess, that, in the words of renowned photographer Joel Meyerowitz, “only the camera makes visible”.
As a new exhibition at London’s Somerset House challenges the use of colour within the realm of reportage photography, Glass speaks with the show’s curator, an internationally renowned specialist in photography, and with some of the photographers, some of whom were Cartier-Bresson’s contemporaries: Fred Herzog knew Cartier-Bresson’s seminal work across vast distances; Harry Gruyaert was a junior colleague who debated colour ferociously with the master; legendary figure Saul Leiter’s first museum exhibition was held at the Cartier-Bresson Foundation; Joel Meyerowitz met and was deeply influenced by Cartier-Bresson; and Carolyn Drake never knew the man first-hand, but was deeply influenced by his example.
William A Ewing, curator
What is the “Decisive Moment”?
People have often defined it differently, and one might say that it is one of those terms that people define according to their own mindsets. But the common core of it is capturing a fleeting conjunction of circumstances – and, more importantly, knowing or sensing when to snap the shutter to crystallise the “moment”. Cartier-Bresson had almost a sixth sense; he could anticipate these moments, which in reality are fractions of a second. That talent for knowing “when” was what led to the word “decisive”. A hesitation, and the moment would be lost for ever.
What are the qualities or characteristics that a reportage photograph must encompass?
Reportage is only one aspect of it, and from Cartier-Bresson’s perspective probably the least interesting. He wasn’t interested in telling a story in the traditional sense, but in capturing, often in a single image, a whole world.
Considering that black and white is such an archaic medium now, why do you think it is still so popular? What would you say was the secret of its power?
Good question. It enjoyed supremacy for not that long, come to think of it. It achieved mastery (Man Ray, Bill Brandt, Walker Evans, André Kertész, Harry Callahan, Lee Friedlander, to name a few masters) in the 1920s and 30s, and already by the 1970s it was being supplanted by colour.
It took a decade or so longer to position colour firmly in the leadership role, but we can see now black and white’s moment was actually very short … but colour is something new. It does not “replace: black and white. No one wants to see his favourite black and white images in colour! We now see that black and white had its own language, appeal, aesthetic – call it what you will. Only now that colour is so dominating are we able to see black and white as something special, and even fragile (in terms of its role in culture). Colour may be wonderful, but people feel that something has also been lost.
What advantages are there to a colour reportage photograph?
Immediacy and realism. In black and white, blood may not be blood; in colour, blood is blood.
What was it about Cartier-Bresson’s work that made him such a master?
The fantastic sense of composition is only one aspect. I believe the work is much more profound than that, or of merely “capturing” or “seizing” a moment. What his best work does is draw back a veil on reality, and show us another world, or another dimension. The pictures themselves are never of extraordinary events – but of ordinary events and ordinary people. And yet they are “fabulous” because they pierce this veil. No other photographer had this particular gift.
What was it that Cartier-Bresson did that hadn’t been done before?
He was one of a small group of pioneers that realised that photography was not about imitating painting or drawing. It was unique. And with the camera liberated from the tripod, it became a part of the body. One could ‘feel’ one’s way with it. One could use it as a sense organ. I think his public realised they were seeing the world as it had never been seen before.
Why did you select these 15 photographers to participate in this exhibition?
I looked for colour photographers who, in my opinion, had an affinity with this idea of “the hunter”. Those prowling about the streets looking for those brief flashes, those strange conjunctions which illuminate our lives – and are so hard to get! A lot of photographers aren’t hunters any more. The schools turn out gatherers, people who set things up and photograph them, with lots of reference to painting – which the art world adores. Once again photography falls into the trap of playing second fiddle to painting.
What irony! The 15 photographers run the gamut from Cartier-Bresson’s friends, like Helen Levitt and Ernst Haas, to young people today who never knew the man. I should add that, though I am the one choosing them because of something I see in their work that relates to Cartier-Bresson’s spirit, they don’t necessarily acknowledge that! I see his disdain of colour as a challenge he threw out to photographers: “Prove me wrong if you can!” And these 15 did.
Harry Gruyaert
When you would argue with Cartier-Bresson over colour versus black and white, what were the reasons you gave for favouring colour?
The object and its colour are one and the same thing – with colour you should immediately be affected by the different tones which express a situation.
Were you very influenced by Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment” ethos?
My main influences in photography are cinema, painting and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Henri Cartier-Bresson for his decisive moment, when things come together in this miraculous way, when the composition is perfect and makes sense. Like he said, “C’est mettre sur la même ligne de mire la tête, l’oeil, et le coeur. C’est une façon de vivre.” (If you put together the head, the eye and the heart it becomes one, it gives harmony and it also becomes a way of life because it is perfect.)
Saul Leiter
Do you favour shooting in colour or black and white, and why is that?
One day, I bought a roll of colour film, and I took pictures. I liked what I saw. I liked colour even though many photographers looked down on colour or felt it was superficial or shallow. There was a preference for black and white. The history of art is full of attempts to belittle colour …
For you, what are the characteristics that a good photograph must possess?
I like ambiguity in a photograph. I like it when one is not certain of what one sees. When we do not know why the photographer has taken a picture, and when we do not know why we are looking at it, all of a sudden we discover something that we start seeing. I like this confusion. It’s quite possible that my work represents a search for beauty in the most prosaic and ordinary places. One doesn’t have to be in some faraway dreamland in order to find beauty.
Fred Herzog
How does a reportage photographer find his “style”?
Everything we know and everything we have done and everything that’s in our history goes into every single picture we take.
What are the characteristics that, for you, a good photograph must possess? [Talking about Man with a bandage]
A scene like this cannot be constructed or posed. If the photographer is seen by the subject before the shutter is released, the opportunity is lost for ever. This is a quintessential photographic moment as the cinematic scene dissolves immediately. I call this type of photography photorealism, because reality of this sort becomes a document of life as it looked in 1968. Luck and imponderables play a big role and, of course, many similar attempts end in failure.
Carolyn Drake
As someone who started taking pictures after Cartier-Bresson’s lifetime, how influenced would you say you were by his work?
I choose frames that I think feel truthful, whether they are moments in the tradition of Cartier-Bresson, or pictures that have no obvious action. I don’t mean truthful in the sense of fact, but in the sense of how I see things.
What prompted you to become a photojournalist?
I try to be conscious of the social and political implications of my work. The pictures in the show are pulled from my work since 2005 – an image from a project about a gated community I explored while working at a newspaper in Florida; a picture I made while living on a fellowship in Ukraine; and the rest from recent projects in Central Asia. I have consciously steered to the edges of where my own country’s [US] political interests lie, making familiar and normal what is not already. I’ve been drawn particularly to Central Asia, a folding point of cultures, a place where it becomes difficult to propagate clichés about what is “Russian”, “Islamic”, or “Chinese”, because here they all, paradoxically, exist together, at once.
Would you always choose to use colour photographs and why?
Colour has, over time, become important in my photography, but I didn’t consciously set out to shoot colour. I remember being drawn to the way colour creates mood, emotion, and narrative in the films of Wong Kar-wai before I became a photographer, and I spent a lot of time viewing and analysing films in university. I’m sure this influenced my photography.
Joel Meyerowitz
How influenced were you by Cartier-Bresson?
I feel that most of the street photography, back in the 1960s, coming out of Cartier-Bresson, was aimed at locating an event in space, singling it out, and sometimes juxtaposing it to something else. But you know exactly what it is that’s being photographed. You know what the intention and the accomplishment of the photographer is.
Are there any other heroes you would cite as inspiration behind your work?
In the 60s, Federico Fellini was my hero. Fellini taught me something different than Cartier-Bresson showed me – a kind of organised chaos – Fellini’s willingness to see everything pass in front of his lens, to give it a certain amount of time for it to astonish us. Just think about the elaborate preparations Fellini goes through to set up a shot – scenes fuelled with motion, people moving towards and away from the camera – they come by the camera, and then they’re off the screen in a split second.
Fellini doesn’t have to hold on something for very long for it to register. He doesn’t have to pummel you with what he’s showing you. He tantalises you with it, passes it in front of you, makes you feel it. And then it’s gone, like life itself! And so what I learnt was that instead of making a picture of something and putting it in the centre, you can turn away from it and photograph something else nearby, and include that in the frame. You can see what’s happening around the so called “subject”, which by its energy, will draw people to look at it.
What are the characteristics that, for you, a good photograph must possess?
You picture something in a frame and it’s got lots of accounting going on in it – stones and buildings and trees – but that’s not what fills up a frame. You fill up the frame with feelings, energy, discovery and risk, and leave room enough for someone else to get in there.
by Nicola Kavanagh
From the Glass Magazine Archive – Issue 12 – Joy