August 2006
- 17
Image And Text
Henri Cartier–Bresson is one of my long-term photographic favourites and his book called Mexican Notebooks is introduced by writer Carlos Fuentes, with as much beauty and poetry as the ensuing pictures. A friend recently told me she was reading Fuentes and I didn’t think much of it or know much (anything) about him. His writing glistens like a jewel, with rare beauty, and I will be hunting him down at the library after reading this…
- 28
The Decisive Moment
I always found Cartier-Bresson’s idea of the ‘decisive moment’ wonderfully suggestive. It’s most obviously relevant in relation to journalistic photography, implying the moment when a piece of editorial is amplified and encapsulated with an appropriate image. But more than that, for me it means an implicit aesthetic that you discover by a receptive sensitivity rather than invasive technique. I find it delicately related to two oriental sources: the divination method of the I Ching, and…