The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : MASTER OF THE MOMENT

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Friday, Aug 06, 2004

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MASTER OF THE MOMENT

THE MAN WHO was christened l'oeil du siécle (the eye of the century) will see no more. But he leaves behind a world that will remain an admiring observer of many thousands of black-and-white photographs he shot, in a style that spawned a long succession of imitators, with an approach that earned him the reputation of being the pioneer of photojournalism. Henri Cartier-Bresson's genius lay in his uncanny ability to freeze-frame the "decisive moment," a talent for sharp-shooting that seemed to rely on a baffling and inexplicable mix of intuition, patience, discipline, and sheer chance. Cartier-Bresson himself stressed the importance of catching that vital moment, that fleeting instant separating good photography from a jumble of images, composition from chaos, the sublime from the mundane. In his view, the photographer is not unlike an animal stalking its prey, waiting for that precise moment to "seize the instant in its flight." One of his most famous pictures — the silhouette of a man frozen in mid-leap against the background of a Parisian railroad station — has become emblematic of a style that reminds us that in photography the creative act must be performed in the twinkling of an eye or lost forever.

The spontaneous and unfussy nature of the master's compositions was reflected in the way he worked. He used a battered little Leica, shot only in black-and-white, relied mainly on a standard 50 mm lens, invariably worked in the available light, and developed a distaste for `artificial' methods such as cropping or altering negatives. He regarded the technical aspects of photography as unimportant and carried his `true to life' approach all over the world, travelling from his native France across Europe and North America to India, China, Japan, and the former Soviet Union. The master of the decisive moment developed an uncanny knack of being in places at the decisive time. He was in India when Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated and in China during the Communist revolution — visits that consolidated his reputation as a great photojournalist. What has received relatively modest critical attention is Cartier-Bresson's portraiture, where his contribution has undergone a belated reassessment. The master found taking portraits difficult and challenging ("you have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt") but his pictures of famous people comprise a formidable and immensely satisfying body of work. A seemingly displeased and dishevelled Truman Capote on a park bench, a quizzical Jean Paul Sartre pulling at his pipe on a Parisian boulevard, a chic and composed Susan Sontag sprawled comfortably on a sofa, a relaxed and smiling Che Guevera in post-revolutionary Cuba — in every portrait, Cartier-Bresson's gently probing images seem to peel away layers from their subjects, leaving the viewer with the shock of recognition.

India has a special place for this man, whose first passion was for painting before he took up photography in the early 1930s. Cartier-Bresson made six extended visits to the country between the time of Independence and his last trip in 1987. His pictures of Mahatma Gandhi's funeral are the best-known in this country, but his photographic engagement with India spanned four decades and covered a staggering variety of subjects, including a dying Ramana Maharishi, the Republic Day parade, the Kumbh in Allahabad, and a Maharajah's birthday celebrations. A little over 100 of these `India' photographs were acquired by The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) in 1990 — a decision that was extremely wise and far-sighted. The photographs may represent only a small part of the treasure of images Cartier-Bresson left behind. But they forge a permanent bond between the master photographer and a country that provided him with a wealth of material.

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