The Decisive Moment
The course notes say
“Before you go any further, give some careful thought to the ‘decisive moment’ debate and note down where you stand (at the moment, anyway) in your learning log.”
Thus I would suggest that there is compositional decisiveness and a narrative decisiveness. The former is illustrated by the position of the train in the image of Meudon, all the elements are arranged. But there is also a moment which is important in telling a story or hinting at it, like the position of the man with the package in the same image.
My construct of “compositional decisiveness” relates to the principles I have elaborated upon with regard to the opinions of Suler (Suler, s.d.) in a later post .
I suggested that the 10 characteristics of an image of a Decisive Moment proposed by Suler, fell into three groups:
A: The compositional elements of the image produce “balance, harmony, simplicity, and unity” (1) with “meaningful figure/ground relationship” (2) and may incorporate “a visual gap, interval, or suspension of some kind” (3). Overall the effect of this composition is to create “an element of ambiguity, uncertainty, and even contradiction”.
B. The image is captured at a “unique, fleeting, and meaningful moment” (5) in “a precisely timed, unrepeatable, one-chance shot” (6) using “an unobtrusive, candid, photorealistic image of people in real life situations” (7)
C: The final image “arouses meaning and emotion about the human condition” (8)
The first of these groups is clearly about composition while the latter ones, particularly the last, will contribute to the narrative.
Bate (Bate, 2016) links the principle of HCB’s “Decisive moment” to “an older concept from art history of telling a story in a single picture”. He describes the suggestion by Lessing, an eighteenth century dramatist and critic, that the ideal way to depict a complex event is by an image “where the past present and future of the story can be read, summed up at a ‘glance’”. He refers to the moment of this image as peripeteia, from the Greek meaning “dramatic moment”.
There is overlap between this narrative aspect and composition, as Bate acknowledges with regard to HCB’s frequent depiction of a figure whose foot is about to strike the ground. “The striding foot indicates a future event, caused by the past, whose outcome is anticipated by what we see in the picture.”
Bate cites HCB, (Images à la Sauvette, 1952) describing his concept of the Decisive Moment as “one unique picture whose composition possesses such vigour and richness and whose content so radiates outward from it that this single picture is a whole story in itself”.
My current position is that the “Decisive Moment” relies on a compositional style and reflects a particular moment describing the human condition. My aim in the next assignment is (unambitiously) to produce a series of images “whose composition possesses such vigour and richness and whose content so radiates outward from it that (each) single picture is a whole story in itself”
I will test the effectiveness of my submission against the ten criteria of Suler and the principle of Bate, that “the past present and future of the story can be read, summed up at a ‘glance’”.
References
References to the works cited in this post are found in my separate post “References”
I set out my objectives in my last post in this section. I will review my progress on these.
Skills: Film Photography
My objective was to start developing and printing my own work. I have achieved this by recommissioning my darkroom and obtaining a medium format enlarger. I have successfully developed 35mm and 120mm film and printed these up to 10x8in sizes.
This is an ongoing project. I intend to submit my next assignment as silver prints and have started making images for this. However I believe I need to gain more experience with the behaviour of different film and papers stock, and ensure the standard of my final prints is as high as possible.
Videography
I had been using the Adobe publication Premiere Pro CC: Classroom in a Book to develop my editing skills. However the importance of his area is less at the moment and I have concentrated on my film still photography. As a result improving my videography remains ongoing.
Use of WordPress
I have been able to alter the headings and menus appropriate to my needs. I do not see this now as an important area to develop and concentrate on. Related to this I have also started using “Rocketbook” notebooks and phone app. This enables me to quickly and easily convert my handwritten notes in to pdf files and file them in a way that they can be accessed from my learning log or by my tutor with the appropriate link.
Assessment and appraisal skills
This is an ongoing task and I think will continue throughout and beyond the course. I feel I have more confidence in this area, and have included in my log my reflections on images. I now need to seek the views of my tutor and/or others as to whether my assessment is reasonable and accurate.
Knowledge:
My objective was to gain a better understanding of other art disciplines and influence on photographic work. While like the previous objective I think this will continue throughout and beyond the course, I do think I have achieved some steps forward in this.
I have referenced other art disciplines in my learning log and by attending the last OCA study day gained insight into the work of students, other than those studying photography.
I still have a long way to go…
To gain an insight into more contemporary and historical approaches to photography
This is another ongoing objective, but I have been reading more widely and think that my approach to research of this topic is more systematic and better informed. It has been greatly helped by discovering the course reading list which is at the end of the paper notes and not referenced earlier in the notes or included in the pdf file. It has taken me a year to find this.
Attitudes:
The main objective here I think relates to the Assessment area of
Demonstration of creativity – Imagination, experimentation, invention
I have concerns that this is an area in which I am weak, and this remains so. I plan to seek more feedback from my tutor about this and advice as to how to improve
I hope that a better understanding of the creative process used by other artists will help me develop this more.
These are the main objectives I have. I think I have approached the coursework more systematically lately and begun to address some of these as a result.
The course notes direct me to the work of Paul Graham for a consideration of an alternative approach to the issue of the “decisive moment”.
“Paul Graham (born 1956) is an English fine-art and documentary photographer whose work has been exhibited, published and collected internationally. Graham has won the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, the Hasselblad Award, the W. Eugene Smith Grant, fellowships from Winston Churchill Memorial Trusts, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and won the inaugural Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards prize for best photographic book of the past 15 years.” (Tate, s.d.)
On reviewing Graham’s images on the Tate website I came across this:
Untitled #38, Woman on Sidewalk, New York, 2002. Paul Graham
In order to better assess this image in the light of those of HCB, I converted it into black and white.
Untitled #38, Woman on Sidewalk, New York, 2002. Paul Graham. Rendered monochrome A Procter
I think it shares many features with the images of HCB. I note the strong geometric composition with a diagonal line on which the subject sits. Similarly the subject herself is sitting in a posture apparently unstaged and natural, and the photographer has captured her expression which is the striking aspect of the image. Her head is positioned, apparently carefully, in the image against the dark background. I find her expression and geometric framing very reminiscent of HCB and his principles for producing images of the “decisive moment”.
Similar to my comments on the earlier image, I find it hard to agree with Pantall’s assertion that these are images of “a street with moments so decisively indecisive that we don’t really know what we are looking at or looking for.” (Pantall, s.d.)
Present 17. Paul Graham
This image of a woman who has fallen on the sidewalk has a formal compositional plan with the bold line on the wall behind the subjects. The woman is positioned in the image so her body is divided by the pole, but her head is clearly adjacent to a grill on the wall behind. The heads of the passers-by are carefully positioned to maximise the illumination and the woman herself has “conveniently” fallen into a pool of light. The photographer here captures the gesture of the outreached hand of the man apparently trying to help her up. This sensitive gesture, is at odds with Pantall’s descriptions of urban life as represented by Graham.
“There are a fair few hostile glances in The Present, and a fair bit of blindness, disability, poverty and wealth. The people are… not glamorous or striking or eccentric, but rather they’re harried, harassed and distant; no relationships were struck in the making of this book. These people could be anywhere; they stride purposefully along streets that hold no attractions to jobs that hold no attractions, their faces set into grimaces of urban stress.”
People do indeed “stride purposefully” but in many cases they are captured in a moment which has much in common with the images of HCB in terms of the carefulness and style of the composition and the directions of their gaze. This is exemplified by these.
Present 14. Paul Graham
Present 08. Paul Graham
Zouhair Ghazzal (Ghazzal, s.d.) writing about the work of HCB also emphasises the importance of gesture is these images.
“Cartier-Bresson’s most well known relics reveals the importance of bodily gestures in each one of them.”
and he considered that the work of HCB relied “instead on the juxtaposition of bodily gestures with symmetries created by light and space.”
He also considers that because of this there is a tendency in the observer to look for meaning in the image. “Hence that sudden urge, when confronted with a Cartier-Bresson image, to narrate it”. Although he considers that “An image does not narrate: it rather creates an unbridgeable abyss between itself-as-frame and the rest of the unframed world”.
Ghazzal also considers the work of other photographers, working after HCB. He considers that many do not incorporate the principle into their work. “Some of the top photographers of the last few decades, which willy-nilly did not base their photography on the decisive moment, would argue that the latter’s major weakness was precisely its sole reliance on gestures.”
However he also suggests that it is not solely the reliance on gesture which underpins this but the nature of modern urban environments. He argues modern cites either in America or Europe or the Middle East, have expanded “indefinitely, and create(ed) for the most part urban landscapes that are so monotonous and dull, that no decisive moment would be able to capture.”
Hsu, in his review (Hsu, s.d.) of the re-issue of the work by HCB, (Cartier-Bresson and Simon, 2014) , considers that the term “decisive moment” itself may be part of the problem here.
“Cartier-Bresson’s moments include not only the dynamic coordination of form, but also acts of looking that consider gesture, expression and a transient connection with his subjects. Paradoxically, the popularity of the term ‘decisive moment’ may have done Cartier-Bresson a form of disservice; while his individual photographs are very much about the ‘simultaneous recognition’ of significance and form,”
The Decisive Moment was originally published in the United States by Simon and Schuster in 1952, and simultaneously published in France by Verve as Images à la Sauvette (“images on the fly”, or “images on the run”). This French title emphasises the way the image is captured – rather than the content of the image of a particular moment.
The principles of how HCB captured his images is considered by Suler (Suler, s.d.) .
Suler also comments on the original French title of the book “In 1952 Cartier-Bresson published Images à la Sauvette, which roughly translates as “images on the run” or “stolen images.” The English title of the book, The Decisive Moment, was chosen by publisher Dick Simon of Simon and Schuster. In his preface to the book of 126 photographs from around the world, Cartier-Bresson cites the 17th century Cardinal de Retz who said, “Il n’y a rien dans ce monde qui n’ait un moment decisif” – “There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment.” Suler also describes what he believes are 10 principles of the decisive moment image. These are: 1. A sophisticated composition in which the visual coalescence of the photographed scene capitalizes on the principles of Gestalt psychology to create a “prägnanz” atmosphere of balance, harmony, simplicity, and unity. 2. A sophisticated background to the subject that interacts both visually and psychologically with the subject in a synergistically meaningful figure/ground relationship. 3. The visual as well as psychological anticipation of completion and closure, which often surfaces as a visual gap, interval, or suspension of some kind. 4. An element of ambiguity, uncertainty, and even contradiction that rouses the viewer’s curiosity about the meaning or outcome of the scene depicted. 5. The capture of a unique, fleeting, and meaningful moment, ideally one involving movement and action. 6. A precisely timed, unrepeatable, one-chance shot. 7. An unobtrusive, candid, photorealistic image of people in real life situations. 8. A dynamic interplay of objective fact with subjective interpretation that arouses meaning and emotion about the human condition. 9. The overarching context of a productive photography session – or “good hour” – that starts with tension, then culminates in a personal and artistic realization that is the DM image. 10. The DM photo as a product of a unique set of technical, cognitive, and emotional skills developed from extensive training and experience in photography, as well as from a psychological knowledge of people.
It seems to me that these principles fall into distinct independent groups:
A: The compositional elements of the image produce “balance, harmony, simplicity, and unity” (1) with “meaningful figure/ground relationship” (2) and may incorporate “a visual gap, interval, or suspension of some kind” (3). Overall the effect of this composition is to create “an element of ambiguity, uncertainty, and even contradiction”.
B. The image is captured at a “unique, fleeting, and meaningful moment” (5) in “a precisely timed, unrepeatable, one-chance shot” (6) using “an unobtrusive, candid, photorealistic image of people in real life situations” (7)
C: The final image “arouses meaning and emotion about the human condition” (8)
The remaining two principles appear to me to replicate the other principles outlined. A “productive photography session… culminat(ing) in a personal and artistic realization” (9) is surely necessary for all photographic endeavours. The “technical, cognitive, and emotional skills” (10) needed are used to achieve the earlier 8 points.
Applying this to the images of Paul Graham, I would suggest that the images which I showed earlier achieve that compositional technique. They are taken also taken at a particular unrepeatable moment. Most of all they comment on the human condition in modern urban environment, as Pantall recognises (quoted above).
References
References to the works cited in this post are found in my separate post “References”
“Watch the Henri Cartier-Bresson documentary ‘L’amour de court’ (‘Just plain love’, 2001) Write a personal response to the film in the contextual section of your learning log,”
I watched this video of the documentary film:
Henri Cartier-Bresson: L’amour tout court Directed by Raphaël O’Byrne (2001) (O’Byrne, 2014)
This film consists of a series of interviews with Henri Cartier-Bresson (HCB) in which he describes influences on his work and his approach to his work. It is illustrated with some of his images and his description of these and the background to them.
There were a number of themes in the documentary which I noted and considered.
The first of these was early in the film he used the phrase “what matters is to look” and elaborated this by saying “you have to be receptive, that’s all”.
By this I understand that his work comes from an intense awareness of what is happening around him and being able to record this. He emphasised, perhaps somewhat self-deprecatingly, that “it’s always luck” and that the relationship between elements in his images are a “matter of chance”.
I suspect that even if it was a matter of chance as to whether he captured the elements in an arrangement he found satisfactory, his selection of the images for publication was actually very carefully performed. He explained that the basis of many of his images is the geometry and his arrangement of the elements is based on the Golden Number. He illustrated this with the image of Scanno, Italy 1951.
Scanno, Italie, 1951. Henri Cartier-Bresson
(But when I researched more of his images it seemed clear to me that prominent geometric forms are a common feature of many of these). Consistent with this was his emphasis that “form more than light” is important to his work.
Another prominent theme related to his principle of “being receptive” was his approach to travel; and the importance of being part of the world.
This was illustrated by consideration of his image “Funeral of a Kabuki actor, Japan”.
Funeral of a Kabuki actor, Japan. Henri Cartier-Bresson
The commentary of the film suggested that HCB “likes those that he photographs not to realise what he is doing”. This was illustrated by the comment that he painted the shiny parts of his camera black to make it less obvious (and presumably setting a fashion for all black bodied cameras which became popular in the 1970s for “serious” photographers).
It is suggested in the film, that only in this way would those whom he photographed act normally and be spontaneous, and thereby the grief shown in this image was more genuine. However I was struck by a comparison with the image by Don McCullin, Turkish Village 1964 and McCullin’s account of making it.
Turkish Village 1964. Don McCullin
“A woman entered screaming. One of the dead was her new husband. I was standing just by him… I was looking for their blessing to continue… I started quietly taking photographs with great respect. I was allowed to continue.” Don McCullin (As quoted in Baker and Mavlian, 2019)
I think that there is little doubt that the grief shown by the woman in McCullin’s image is genuine and clearly shown. What this suggests to me is that it is less important that the subjects do not realise what the photographer is doing, but that the photographer is empathetic to the subjects and, in the same was as was emphasised in the HCB documentary, “part of the world”.
References
References to the works cited in this post are found in my separate post “References”
The information about this meeting described Peter Aitchison’s career:
Peter began his photographic career some 30 years ago, training as a studio assistant and having decided that studio work was not for him, his career progressed into PR and national press photography, including time spent as a Royal Rota photographer.
Travel, which Peter enjoyed enormously, was a fundamental part of his newspaper work and it was a natural progression for him to subsequently follow his passion to work on his collection of travel images. He currently hosts international photo tours, together with photo walks in Manchester.
His talk started with an introduction to his career and then he presented some of his images of India, and Cuba, reflecting their culture and people. In the afternoon session gave a presentation on Manchester street photography.
His travel images appear to me to form three broad types: showing scenery and architecture, groups of people and more formal portraits of a person in their normal setting. I have tried to describe important aspects of the presentation which I learned.
The first of these is to do with the style of his images. He said in his presentation that the incorporation of colour and texture was important, and it is clear from the images on his website that the colours in his foreign images are particularly vibrant. He did not describe how he achieves this, but did imply that he uses post-processing techniques to emphasise this aspect.
Many of his portraits are in black and white and he said he chooses to show an image in monochrome when there are particularly strong textures, particularly in a face.
One aspect of his slide show which was quite striking was his choice of framing of the image. All the images he showed had a black border with a white surround. He explained that this was a customised format he used in Lightroom, but he did not elaborate on his choice of this style. However to me it made the images have a style reminiscent of those of Cartier-Bresson, all edged with a black border.
A second aspect to his work was his description of his technique when taking portraits in the street. He emphasised the importance of engaging with his subjects by involving them in conversation and showing them the image on his camera. This seems very similar to the approach also described by Don McCullin which I described in my account of a television programme about this.
Another interesting theme from his presentation was that of the ethics of taking images in the street in candid and informal setting. He stressed his practice of being very open and obvious as to what he was doing and considered using telephoto lenses from a distance to take images of people “stealing the picture”.
A further ethical issue he considered was the approach to taking images in situations like the slums of Mumbai. He supports an educational charity for the children of the slums for his trips. He said he takes images of “happy” people, and avoids images of rough sleeping which he considers “poverty porn”. There seems to me to be a major ethical debate here about ethical tourism, rather than documentary photography. This is a subject I will consider in future posts (maybe in future modules…).
The brief for this exercise is: “Start by doing your own research into some of the artists discussed above. Then, using slow shutter speeds, the multiple exposure function, or another technique inspired by the examples above, try to record the trace of movement within the frame. You can be as experimental as you like. Add a selection of shots together with relevant shooting data and a description of your process (how you captured the shots) to your learning log.”
I have researched some of the artists whose work is described in this section and have made some brief posts about this.
Aim:
We have been experiencing very windy weather lately and I have noticed that the trees near my home move in the wind in a very characteristic and consistent pattern in the gusts of wind. I have tried to capture this pattern in a still image.
Methods:
The technique that I have used is making a moderately long exposure so that the branches of the trees are seen as a blur, but I hoped to make the image such that it was clearly recognisable but the pattern of the movement shown. The range of exposure I have used is between 1/8th second and 8 seconds, with the camera on a tripod. As the long exposures required smaller apertures than my lenses allowed, even at the least sensitive ISO setting of 100, I have also used neutral density filters of various density to allow an aperture to give appropriate depth of field.
Selection Process of Images:
The course notes indicate that: “One of the ways to communicate discernment and the development of your ideas is through the contact sheet. A digital contact sheet is just thumbnails of a sequence of shots, of course, but the important thing is that it’s an unedited sequence. Including an unedited sequence will allow your tutor to see and comment upon your selection process.
You should annotate your contact sheets. As a minimum, indicate your ‘selects’, together with relevant shooting data and brief observations. This will add significant value to a contact sheet.”
For this exercise I will describe my selection process in detail.
I initially rate my digital images as:
X – rejected (and subsequently deleted) These are images in which there are gross errors in focussing, exposure or composition such as pressing the shutter in accidentally. While I recognise these may rarely result in accidentally interesting images, on the whole these do not, as is the case in this sequence.
1* – kept in my Lightroom catalogue with appropriate key wording so they will appear in future searches. However these also have gross characteristics which mean they fail to achieve my self-imposed brief. For example they do not show the feature I was hoping to obtain perhaps because of composition, timing or other factor.
2* – also kept in my Lightroom catalogue with appropriate key wording. These generally meet my aims and I examine these in more detail in the “Develop” module of Lightroom to see how effectively they show what I aimed to. If I am happy that with or without post-processing they are suitable for sharing I then rate these as 3*
3* images in my catalogue may not all meet my brief and there is still a selection process beyond this which I will describe in relation to this exercise.
The Images for Exercise 3.2
All this images I shot with basic shooting data is in this contact sheet.
I examined the 2* images further and decided not to process these – mainly because although they show the effect I was trying to achieve, I think there are better ones.
I have chosen two subjects, the foliage of a sycamore tree which was the tree which initially attracted my to this project, and the tops of birch trees against the sky. Both of these show the movement pattern with sufficient detail to still show what they actually are. The sycamore also includes some detail of parts of the image which were not in motion and serve to accentuate the movement. The two images which I believe are the most satisfactory for this exercise are these two – for that reason.
EYV Online Meetup 28 June 2019: The Decisive Moment
Led by Robert Bloomfield
The topic for this meeting was “The Decisive Moment”, the title of the third assignment on EYV, and my next assignment.
In a previous post I have described my initial thoughts about this topic. For the meeting we were encouraged to bring images to discuss in terms of the “Decisive Moment”. I described my thoughts about compositional decisiveness and narrative decisiveness. Robert suggested that the latter is an extension of Cartier-Bresson’s original concept, but one that has been considered by others. He referred me to the writings of David Bates on this.
Robert discussed and introduced the concepts of “architectural framing” and “gesture” as characterising the Cartier-Bresson “classical” (my quotes) decisiveness. He pointed out the framing of the figure by the posts and suggested this is a type of architectural framing. He also commented on the posture of the figure, as representing “gesture”. This was a helpful discussion and helped me to understand the way forward with the assignment.
We discussed the use of film for the assignment. I am considering using this medium in order to avoid the temptation to use high speed continuous shooting to obtain the precise moment of decisiveness!
The other learning points I took away are suggestions for further reading including “Camera Lucida” by Roland Barthes.
EYV Zoom Meeting 21 May 2019: Photography is Simple
Led by Robert Bloomfield
This was the second of these meetings I have been able to attend and found the previous one very helpful but omitted to keep notes and record it here on my learning log!!
The meetings are described as:
“This is a new, supportive space for students to meet and share course experiences with each other and the Unit Leader, and to ask any burning questions.”
The topic for this meeting was “Photography is Simple”, the title of the fifth and last assignment on EYV.
I had not had the opportunity to give much thought to this as it is some time in the future and in recent months I have had an enforced gap in my studies for the course. My preliminary thoughts and approach on the subject was to look at the dictionary definition of “simple”. This definition includes two uses of the word “simple” which encompass
easily understood or done and presenting no difficulty and
plain, basic or uncomplicated in form nature or design
So, for example, the work of and artist like Rachael Talibard is not easily created – she goes to great lengths to make her images of storms, both in the planning and her positioning to make the image. However the images appear easy to understand – they are just what they appear, photographs of waves making patterns. On the other hand, the work of someone like Guy Bourdin may be easier to create but with its basis in surrealism is more difficult to understand.
In the meeting I presented this idea, and appeared to have some support for that view.
Other concepts were introduced by Robert Bloomfield with which I was not familiar and fnding out more about these are my objectives to do more work on.
The most significant of these ideas for me was the concept of photography as a mirror or window. In the former the photographer projects himself to the world (Robert associated the work of Francesca Woodman with this approach) and in the latter the world is “explored in all its presence and reality” – a concept attributed to Paul Graham.
The other major learning experience for me was the discovery of the course reading list! As it was at the end of the notes and not referred to earlier, I had not seen it up to now. My next work is to look at some of the suggested works from this.
Having looked ahead in the course notes I saw that “The Decisive Moment” was a topic for research and the basis of the third assignment. I have been thinking about the meaning of this for a while, prior to having the opportunity to read the suggested sources about this. This post reflects those initial thoughts.
As I had not read the notes for the course I initially believed I had had a unique and novel insight into the nature of this concept. That is, in making an image, the photographer moves his camera in the three spatial dimensions: to the left or right of the subject, near or far away, and from a high or low view point. In addition there is a fourth dimension of time, and the photographer chooses to open the shutter at a particular moment. The uniqueness of this fourth dimension is that whereas if he moves too far in one of the spatial dimensions, he can always move back, but this is not possible with time. There is a further consideration regarding time, and that is how long the shutter is open when creating the image, and therefore we might better think of the “Decisive Moments” rather than a moment.
Having read more about this I now realise my insight is the principle described by Flusser.
“The photographer moves within specific categories of space and time regarding the scene: proximity and distance, bird- and worm’s-eye views, frontal- and side-views, short or long exposures, etc.” (Flusser, 2012)
Examples of images where this is prominent include this by André Kertész..
Meudon 1928, André Kertész
The image was created when the train was positioned at a compositionally pleasing place on the viaduct, AND the man with the package is prominent in the foreground. Kertész may have planned this with the aid of railway timetables, but the position of the man is probably outside his control.
Another image where advance planning has been important is this by Willy Ronis.
Un dimanche au Louvre. Willy Ronis
He has made this image at a time when the lighting in the room matches the direction of the lighting in the painting, and there are sufficient people in the gallery to make a crowd hiding the frame of the painting. As a result it is difficult to determine which are figures in the painting and which are the viewers in the gallery.
The importance of the duration of shutter opening is exhibited by this image by Don McCullin.
Grenade Thrower Hue Vietnam. Don McCullin
The slight blur of the soldier’s arm emphasises the sense of movement and dynamism in his posture. McCullin has made the image at the decisive moment To create that composition.
However this image illustrates another aspect of decisiveness about this. The description of this image demonstrates this:
“He looked like an Olympic javelin thrower. Five minutes later this man’s throwing arm was like a stumpy cauliflower, completely deformed by the impact of a bullet.” Don McCullin as quoted (Baker and Mavlian, 2019).
The moment that the image was made may have been the moment his position was identified by the sniper who shot off his hand.
Thus I would suggest that there is compositional decisivenessand a narrative decisiveness. The former is illustrated by the position of the train in the image of Meudon, all the elements are arranged. But there is also a moment which is important in telling a story or hinting at it, like the position of the man with the package in the same image.
These images by Don McCullin each capture a moment, and are decisive both compositionally and in terms of the narrative.
The Bogside, Londonderry (2). Don McCullin
The Bogside, Londonderry (1). Don McCullin
The Bogside, Londonderry (3). Don McCullin
But what they really seem like to me, are stills from a video that McCullin did not make and each show the development of the interaction, and as such have a narrative quality.
References
References to the works cited in this post are found in my separate post “References”
This project seems to be about ways of leaving a trace of movement within the frame as a way of depicting the sense of movement in a still image. The first example the course notes cite of this is Robert Capa’s image of an American soldier wading ashore under fire on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France on D Day, June 6, 1944.
US Troops Omaha Beach June 6 1944 Robert Capa
The notes also suggest that “the grain and blur seems to lend a sense of authenticity to the shot”, and ask why has this image become the iconic image of D Day. One element of this image which I think may be of significance is that in spite of the graininess and blur, we can see the face and expression of the soldier in the water. I have previously suggested this as an important technique in producing documentary photographs in the work of Willy Ronis and Don McCullin. By seeing the soldier (fairly) clearly, an observer can empathise with him and his position lying in the water, under fire.
I examined other images by Capa of the D Day landings and others on the Magnum website. (Capa founded Magnum Photos In 1947, with Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, George Rodger and William Vandivert. https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/robert-capa/ Accessed 17/6/2019)
There are, as the course notes suggest, other sharp images of that day, and other images which seem to show movement and dynamism such as this image of Trotsky, which is sharp and seems more “polished”.
Trotsky Copenhagen 1937 Robert Capa
The position of his hands in this image give me a sense that they are in motion – not being held static in that position. His curled fingers give a sense of tension and the emotion with which he is speaking. There is some graininess present but this gives the sense of the low light illuminating the scene.
On the Magnum site, there are others which also have the same blur and grainy effect such as this taken several years before D Day during the Spanish Civil War.
Running for shelter during an air raid alarm. Barcelona 1936. Robert Capa
The background and dog is blurred, but the face of the woman is sharp giving a sense of her rush to get to the shelter.
However several of the images of D Day do show grain and blur to a great degree, like that of the soldier wading ashore. In addition there are some which include the image of the sprocket holes on the edge of the film:
US Troops Omaha Beach June 6 1944 Robert Capa
It is unclear to me why Capa does this. It seems as if he is deliberately making the image look amateurish and unpolished. An explanation is suggested. “In the rush to develop the images at the Life bureau in London, a 15 year old darkroom assistant made an error: he set the dryer too high and melted the emulsion in the negatives.” Photography the Whole Story. Ed Hacking J. Thames and Hudson (2012) pp 316 -317.
However the fact that these images were published in this state is important and I think of significance. I started looking at these images around the time of the 75th anniversary celebrations of the Day Landing. On 31 May 2019, on the Today Programme BBC Radio 4, Jonathon Dimbleby was interviewed regarding the D Day landings and coverage by the BBC and his father, Richard Dimbleby. (Today BBC Radio 4, 31/05/2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0005f8m Accessed 17/6/19).
In this interview Jonathon Dimbleby made the point that around the time of the D Day landings, the BBC and Allied broadcasters expanded their broadcasts and their team of war correspondents. He said this was because:
“in a democracy broadcasting accurately from the frontline was widely acknowledged to be of real importance, especially with the Nazi media doing its clever best to distort the facts and to lower morale.”
It is in this context that I think Capa’s coverage should be considered. His images needed to be seen to be genuine and produced under the conditions of real combat. More technically perfect images may be seen by an observer as constructed and false. What is the point of falsifying an imperfect image!
In my reading of Capa’s biography I noted that Capa had a history of creating illusion. He was born Andre Friedmann to Jewish parents in Budapest in 1913. He moved to Paris in 1933 and met the journalist and photographer Gerda Taro. Together, they invented the ‘famous’ American photographer Robert Capa and both began to sell their prints under that name. (Gerda Taro: the blonde of brunete. N L Diu The Telegraph 09 Dec 2007)
The persona “Robert Capa” who has created a large body of work, and was introduced in December 1938 by Picture Post as “The Greatest War Photographer in the World” based on his images of the Spanish Civil War, is therefore a creation! (https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/robert-capa/ Accessed 17/6/2019)
A further theme that I have eluded to in my description of the work of another “war photographer”, Don McCullin, is the effect of war on the photographer. Capa’s partner, Gerda Taro, was killed in 1937, hit by a tank as she escaped a sudden attack near Brunete, and is now regarded as ‘probably the first female reporter who ever died in action’. Capa (Friedmann) was killed when he stood on a landmine while photographing for Life in Thai-Binh, Indochina, on 25 May 1954.
Andrew Procter 