Who is the practitioner (what is their name?) and when were they practicing?
The photo was taken by French Photographer and painter, Henri Cartier-Bresson, perhaps most well-known for his notion of the decisive moment.
Bresson’s decisive moment refers to the capturing of an event that is spontaneous, whereby the photo itself is representative of the essence and atmosphere of the event himself.
“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.”
— Henri Cartier-Bresson
In 1929 Bresson was given his first camera, and his focus switched from oil painting to photography.
What is the title of the photo or video you have chosen to analyse (can you provide a link?)
I have chosen Bresson’s photograph entitled Children Playing in the Ruins, Seville Spain.
This photo stood out to me because of its pathos. Seville’s ruined, damaged buildings and the emotion expressed from the children’s eyes are to me associated with the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, despite being taken roughly three years earlier.
You can find out more about this image here.
With the photo or video you are examining when was it produced (date)?
The photo was produced in 1933 during Cartier-Bresson’s set tour of Southern Europe and the Maghreb. It’s produced in gelatin silver print; prints made with silver halides and suspended in a layer of gelatin on fibre based paper- used since the 1880s.
(Pictured above is one of Cartier-Bresson’s contact sheets from 1933, with the circles being the photo he chose to publish).
How was the photo or video authored?
It’s likely this photo was taken with his 35 mm Leica – one of his favourite cameras due to its fast shutter speed and more compact size. Leica were considered super grade cameras; receiving enthusiastic support from camera users around the world. Again, it was during Cartier-Bresson’s tour of Southern Europe where he captured what would soon become his unique photographic style – capturing life on the run.
Considered a “masterpiece of photographic surrealism”, this image presents children in a very unchildlike environment; some acknowledge the camera through eye contact, while others continue their activities undisturbed. The picture’s space is somewhat ambiguous; the foreground wall acts both as a window to the background drama and as a stage for the foreground actors, the children. [JLR; Waking Dream, pp. 363-364]
How was the photo or video published?
Very little is known about how Cartier-Bresson published this image. However, the photo was published originally as hard copy-print. Towards the end of the thirties, with outbreak of World War II, Cartier-Bresson was actually known to have cut his negatives into individual frames and thrown out those he did not like.
It is believed that this image was printed in 1947, and that Cartier-Bresson gifted it to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
How was the photo or video distributed?
This photo has been extremely widely distributed throughout the years – particularly through print media. However today, if you google the photo’s title, there are over 358,000 results, with the internet being the primary distributor. It was originally exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1933 (Cartier-Bresson’s first exhibition) and from there were shown at an Exhibition at Atheneo Club, Madrid and at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. Many academic books feature and distribute this image, including Cartier-Bresson’s own, aptly titled The Decisive Moment.
F i n a l t h o u g h t s . . .
“While photography used to be something that others – professionals equipped with large machines that allowed them to capture a better image of the world out there, advertisers trying to sell us chunks of that world, photojournalists dispatched to the world’s remote corners that few of us could regularly access – did, we can safely say that, in the age of the camera phone and wireless communication, we are all photographers now”.
–Photomediations: An Introduction, p.7
-This week’s readings and lecture have highlighted the substantial shift in relation to having accessibility to author, publish and distribute photos. When referring to analogue photos – the process is entirely different. It involves using a film camera, processing the images in a darkroom and distributing the photos using print media. Today, in a digital age, the iPhone takes out so many of these steps to allow high quality pictures to be published and distributed online almost instantly. I’ll discuss more on that next week!
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Sources:
Kamila K & Zylinska J, editors. Photomediations: An Introduction by Joanna Zylinkska. Open Humanities Press, 2016, viewed 2 February 2018, http://www.openhumanitiespress.org/books/ titles/photomediations/, pp.7-16.
Wells L 2015, Photography: A Critical Introduction. 5th ed., Routledge, New York, pp. 9-27.
https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_2703_300062051.pdf
https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/tag/henri-cartier-bresson/
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/283312