Masters I: Those who caught the moment

Learning goal

You will be able to get to know three masters of the tradition of catching the moment, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Vivian Maier and Ara Güler, not only through their famous photos but through their ways of working and seeing. You will compare how Cartier-Bresson worked with a small camera, setting up a scene and waiting for the right moment; how Vivian Maier approached people holding the camera at waist level; and how Ara Güler built an urban memory by recording a city's everyday life over decades. You will see that a photographer's way of seeing is made of decisions repeated from choice of subject to framing and timing. You will discuss how people photographed unawares in the street, and photos published after the photographer's death, raise the question of consent, and know that how different skin tones are exposed in black-and-white street photography is a photographer's decision.

The question

The older club member puts three small books next to the album. On the cover of the thinnest is the silhouette of a man who has leapt into the air over still water behind a train station in Paris; the man hangs in the air, his foot about to touch the water, his reflection beneath him. In the one beside it are strangers whose faces were looked at up close on a city's pavements, and the shadow of a woman photographing herself, appearing in shop windows. In the last are Istanbul's misty piers, fishing boats, old men sitting in coffeehouses.

Your friend looks at the man in the first book for a long time. Is this frame luck, or did the photographer know in advance that the man would jump? The older member says the photographer gave these moments a name. How did Cartier-Bresson find "the decisive moment"? Why does someone walking in the same street not see this moment, while someone else does?

Context

In the seeing like a photographer lesson you saw the decisive moment, which Henri Cartier-Bresson named in one of his books, as the meaning of an event and the formal order carrying it coinciding in a fraction of a second (Lesson 2.4). In the street photography lesson, too, we discussed the techniques and ethical questions of photographing unstaged everyday life in public space (Lesson 16.3). This lesson reads those ideas through the real working methods of this tradition's masters.

Getting to know a master isn't memorizing their photos, but understanding how they looked. Even photographers working in the same period, in the same genre, make very different decisions: where to look, how close to get, when to press the shutter and what to do with the photos. This lesson makes these decisions visible by putting three masters side by side.

Simple explanation

How did Cartier-Bresson work?

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a photographer born in France in 1908 who died in 2004. He had trained in painting and looked at form, especially geometry, like a painter. In the early 1930s he came across a small, quiet, handheld thirty-five-millimeter camera, and worked with cameras of this kind all his life. Such a camera let the photographer move through a crowd unnoticed and react in the second the moment came. In 1947, together with a few photographers, he founded Magnum, an agency in which photographers kept the rights to their own work.

Setting the stage and waiting is a way of working in which the photographer finds a place where the light, lines and forms are suitable, stands there, and waits for an event that will complete the scene to happen. The frame of the man leaping over the puddle is often seen as luck, but this tradition teaches preparing for luck: the composition is set up in advance, the photographer waits inside the scene, and when the movement begins, eye and finger work together. The decisive moment is the product of this preparation; not everyone walking in the street sees the same moment, because not everyone waits in the same place, seeing the same form.

What did Vivian Maier do differently?

Vivian Maier was a photographer born in New York in 1926 who died near Chicago in 2009. She spent most of her life working as a nanny and took tens of thousands of photos, but while she was alive she published almost none of them; she didn't even have many of her films developed. Her photos came into a buyer's hands in 2007, when her belongings went to auction over unpaid storage rent, and drew wide interest after her death.

A waist-level finder is a viewfinder in which the camera is held not at eye level but at chest or waist level, and framed by looking down from above. In the street Maier mostly used a twin-lens, medium-format camera with such a finder. Someone shooting with this camera looks not at people's faces but down, at their camera; they don't make eye contact with the person in front of them, and that person feels a camera pointed at their face less. The faces of many of the strangers Maier photographed up close, looking slightly downward at the lens at chest level, carry the trace of this way of working. Her own portraits reflected in shop windows, mirrors and shadows are also part of her way of seeing.

Posthumous publication is a situation in which a photographer's photos weren't published while they were alive, and after their death are chosen, printed and exhibited by others. Maier's photos today appear in books and exhibitions, but she didn't decide which frames would be chosen, how they would be printed or how they would be sequenced. This leaves an important question: how should work the photographer didn't choose themselves be read as their work? The same question is asked about the people in the photos: people photographed unawares in the street, who might have thought the photos would never be published, appear decades later on an exhibition wall.

How did Ara Güler record a city?

Ara Güler was a photojournalist born in Istanbul in 1928 who died, again in Istanbul, in 2018. In 1950 he began working as a photojournalist at a newspaper, in later years also worked for international publications, and after meeting Cartier-Bresson joined paths with Magnum for a while. His best-known work, though, is about his own city: over decades he recorded Istanbul's piers, fishermen, streets, coffeehouses and misty mornings in black-and-white photos; that is why he is often called "the eye of Istanbul."

Urban memory is the visual accumulation, formed by recording a city's everyday life, places and people over a long time, that shows how that city has changed. Many piers, boats and streets in Güler's photos are in another form today or no longer exist; that is why the value of his frames comes not only from individual moments but also from this accumulation spread over decades. Cartier-Bresson's gaze, looking for the form of a single moment, and Güler's gaze, recording a city's time, are two different faces of the same tradition.

A way of seeing is the whole of the decisions a photographer makes again and again, from choice of subject to framing, from distance to timing. The three masters come from the same street tradition, but their ways of seeing are separate: one waits for the moment inside the geometry, one looks at strangers up close and from below, one accumulates a city's time. How different skin tones will look in black-and-white street photography is also part of these decisions: which tone the exposure and print are made for decides whether a dark face keeps its detail in shadow.

Visual evidence

You open the three books side by side. In Cartier-Bresson's frame the man is in the air, his body on a line; jumping figures on the posters behind repeat his movement, his reflection in the puddle beneath him like a mirror. The frame looks like a coincidence, but the form is so complete that it is clear the photographer stood there and waited.

On Maier's pages are faces photographed up close; the faces look not directly at the viewer but slightly downward. On one page, her own reflection in a shop window with the camera she holds in front of her chest. On Güler's pages, a misty pier, fishermen pulling a rope, old men drinking tea in a coffeehouse; the dark, sunburnt face of one of the fishermen can be made out with its wrinkles even in shadow.

Your friend asks whether the strangers in Maier's photos knew these frames would one day be exhibited. The older member doesn't answer, but only closes one of Güler's books and leaves Maier's open. Three books from the same tradition, but three separate ways of seeing.

Common mistakes

Summary

Henri Cartier-Bresson prepared the decisive moment with a small, quiet camera, by setting up the scene and waiting at a place where the light and form were suitable; Vivian Maier looked at strangers up close and from below with a camera with a waist-level finder, never published most of her photos, and her work was chosen by others after her death; Ara Güler built an urban memory by recording Istanbul's everyday life over decades. The ways of seeing of three masters from the same tradition diverge in their decisions about subject, distance and timing; people photographed unawares in the street, posthumous publication, and how different skin tones are exposed in black-and-white printing are questions of this tradition that need to be thought about.

Mini assignment

In this assignment you will try the three masters' ways of working in your own street.

1. Choose three frames by each master from a library or a reliable museum or archive site; write next to each where it came from.
2. In your own street, find a place where the light and lines are suitable, stand there for at least half an hour waiting for a moment that will complete the scene, and shoot it.
3. Holding your camera once at eye level and once at chest level, compare how people look at you and behave; if you photographed someone's face up close, show them the photo and ask permission to use it.
4. Photograph a corner of where you live from the same spot for a few weeks and start a small urban memory series; note how different skin tones look in shadow in the frames.

Check yourself

• Can you tell apart the three masters' ways of working?
• Were you able to catch a moment by setting up a scene and waiting?
• Did you think about the consent of the people you photographed in the street and how different skin tones are exposed?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. What is the basic way of working behind Cartier-Bresson's catching of the decisive moment?

• A) Shooting a large number of frames at random
• B) Setting up the scene at a suitable place and waiting for the right moment
• C) Having people pose
• D) Combining photos afterward

2. How does the waist-level finder Vivian Maier used affect the behavior of the people being photographed?

• A) It forces people to look at the camera
• B) It makes the photographer more visible
• C) It makes shooting from a distance mandatory
• D) Because the photographer looks down, no eye contact is made and the person feels the camera less

3. Why does the value of Ara Güler's Istanbul photos come not only from individual moments?

• A) Because they build an urban memory spread over decades that shows the city's change
• B) Because they are in color
• C) Because they were all shot in a studio
• D) Because they were all shot on the same day

4. What question does the posthumous publication of Vivian Maier's photos raise?

• A) Which camera the photos were shot with
• B) How sharp the photos are
• C) How work the photographer didn't choose should be read, and the consent of the people in the photos
• D) Which paper the photos were printed on

Answers

1. B — The decisive moment is the product of preparation; the composition is set up and the photographer waits for the event.
2. D — Because the photographer looks at their camera, no eye contact is made and the person can behave more naturally.
3. A — Recording the same city over decades builds the visual memory of a changing city.
4. C — The photographer didn't make the selection, and the people in the photos may not have known they would be published.

Summary card

• Cartier-Bresson: set up the scene, wait; the decisive moment is preparation.
• Maier: waist level, close faces, her own reflected portrait; posthumous publication.
• Güler: a decades-long record of a city, urban memory.
• A way of seeing is repeated decisions.
• In the street, think about consent and how skin is exposed.

Bridge to the next lesson

The older member put away the street books and laid a large, heavy book on the table. Its pages held black-and-white mountains: snowy peaks shining in front of a pitch-black sky, rocks in which every tone could be made out from the darkest shadow to the brightest snow. Your friend said these mountains looked nothing like the mountains they had photographed, which had stayed gray and flat. The book's photographer was an American who planned a landscape's tones before shooting. How did Ansel Adams turn a mountain into art? The next lesson tells about the masters of light and nature.