people / decisive moments ~ one amongst many

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Henri Cartier Bresson gave us the decisive moment, a concept / photo strategy which has been often misinterpreted to mean that there is one and only one decisive moment in a scene and that moment is primary predicated on capturing the motion / movement in a scene at the "perfect" moment. However, if one were to read Bresson's ideas about the medium and its apparatus in greater depth, one would come upon a more complete definition of his decisive moment concept / photo strategy:

If a photograph is to communicate its subject in all its intensity, the relationship of forms must be rigorously established. Photography implies the recognition of a rhythm in the world of real things. What the eye does is to find and focus on the particular subject within the mass of reality; what the camera does is simply to register upon film the decision made by the eye.

and

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.

and

... (the photographer) composes a picture in very nearly the same amount of time it takes to click the shutter, at the speed of a reflex action ... if the shutter was released at the decisive moment, you have instinctively fixed a geometric pattern without which the photograph would have been both formless and lifeless ... [T]o 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.

I am in complete agreement with Bresson regarding the above excerpts (amongst many other of his thoughts), which, in a nut shell, express the idea that "it" must all come together in order to work as a good picture. However, I have a thought regarding "the significance of an event" which either; a) contradicts the notion of the "perfect moment" motion / movement wise, or b) expands the idea of the "perfect moment".

To wit .... assuming that a picture maker has recognized the "precise organization of forms" in a scene, in any given picturing situation which features people, there are, iMo, any number of "perfect moments" to picture, motion / movement wise. Many picture makers knowing this, to include Bresson, make a series of pictures of a given situation and, after the picturing fact, choose - from a contact sheet or a computer monitor - one moment from amongst many pictured moments and elevate it to the status of a decisive moment.

That is to write, while a picture maker has recognized a situation / event as potentially having the visual and human interaction characteristics of a decisive moment picture, he/she knows that in fluid situation there will be many decisive moment possibilities. And, it will be up to him/her to decide at a later time which moment of those pictured moments will be elevated to / have bestowed upon it the title of the decisive moment.

In other words, in a very real sense, a moment is not decisive until the picture maker says it is. And, given the opportunity by someone other than the picture maker to view the multiple pictures extracted from a situation, that person might have an entirely different opinion on which moment is the decisive moment. Of course, and correctly so, the picture maker is the final arbiter of which moment most realizes his/her vision.

All of that written, I have been very surprised to once again "discover" a "hidden" body of work lurking un-mined in my picture library. The surprise is not that I have been making pictures of people but rather that I have many more people pictures than I do in other of my picturing categories. To date, I have mined over 150 people pictures and there are more to be found.

Hence my interest in the concept / photo strategy of the decisive moment genre.

Comments

[Michael long]

The posted image by Bresson of the man jumping over the puddle,also mirrored in the poster in the background is one used often to illustrate the decisive moment. In one of his interviews Cartier-Bresson talks on how this image was made. In fact it was made through a small hole in an enclosure and he could only poke his lens through and his rangefinder viewing window was blocked. He clicked the shutter not being aware of this scene unfolding before his lens.This co-exists nicely with your thought that the decisive moment may also be chosen subsequent ie. off a contact sheet.