Book Review, Cartier-Bresson, A propos de Paris

This post is to review the book, A propos de Paris, featuring photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson and as recommended by my tutor. An initial online search with my local libraries had appeared to indicate they didn't stock the book but I had obviously not been careful enough with my search criteria and looking on the actual shelves in my local branch of the library I did in fact find the book.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

First a few notes on Henri Cartier-Bresson. b 1908 in France, d 2004, he was noted for his photo-journalistic and candid photography. Initially schooled in painting, he moved into photography in the thirties, often using a Leica. He was a founder member of Magnum from 1947.
Read more about Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Thoughts on Leica

So why has Leica been popular with HCB and other street photographers?

Well a few ideas that spring to mind are that Leicas are:

• Well made and reliable
• Feature good quality optics
• Are relatively small and quiet in operation so unobtrusive
• Have a viewfinder positioned in the corner allowing the photographers other eye to view the whole scene.

And so why don't we all use them?

• They are expensive!

Read more about Leica M System

The book

The book comes with two short texts, a preceding text by Vera Feyder which I found a little too 'flowery' in its language (possibly made worse as a consequence of translation from French) and then a more digestible text by Andre Pieyre. The images are produced one per page with only a plate number and a year. Captions to the plates are produced as a list in the back of the book, this lets the images speak for themselves though for me I would have preferred to see this text located with the images rather than need to keep flicking to the back.

The Photographs

Composition

When I started to look at the photographs two things quickly struck me about the compositions.

The first was how there would often be something cropped which goes out of the frame, e.g. spire, tree etc. In general such elements can be a problem as they risk leading the viewers eye out of the frame but this does not seem to be the case with these images, the main subject matter being strong enough to keep the attention.

Here's an example with a tree that dominates the foreground and yet the the women with child and dog, almost in silhouette, draws the eye:

The other thing I noticed was how often the composition was based on an implied triangle or set of three points.

Decisive Moment

He is known for his ability to capture what has been termed "the decisive moment" (a title of one of his books from 1952) and the following example from 1932, Behind the Gare St. Lazare, typifies what is meant:

Again you have a set of three; the jumper, the jumpers reflection and the and jumping figure on the billboard in the background.

Missing

Cartier-Bresson was certainly prolific and with a book such as this not everything can be included but there are some images which to some extent seem iconic and yet are missing, for example this picnic scene:

And also missing from the book is this image that I think might be one of his strongest, from 1945, Gestapo informer, again with the distinct three point composition:

Conclusion

Overall this is an enjoyable book, I find some of the photographs truly superb but at the same time I also find an indifference to some of them. This may be due more to the collection rather than the photographer but as a set they do not grip me in the same way as something like Dream Street by fellow Magnum photographer, W Eugene Smith (review pending).