Kairos Thursday May 26, 2005
When interviewed on TV a few years ago Henri Cartier-Bresson insisted he was not an ‘artist’ but simply made photographs, which was a refreshing observation. He didn’t need to embellish or justify his achievement with pretentious verbiage, because his images speak for themselves. I’ve always liked his famous concept of the ‘decisive moment’ and feel it has philosophical implications, and although his work was grounded in a ‘decisive’ photojournalistic sense, his images are probably the greatest photographic collection in existence. He was devoid of arty pretension but his influence was enormous, and although the ‘decisive moment’ is apparently simple, it has interesting connotations. Many of his pictures depict the split second instance, demonstrating his reflexive skill to anticipate an interesting composition or emotionally expressive situation. As the man jumps, if you catch him there it will harmonise with the background in a pleasing way. As those two people talk on the street one of them is obviously upset, and is quite likely to express this in her face, at a definitive point in the exchange. And so on. But many of his pictures aren’t so much split second timing captured in 1000th of a second, as a narrative climax. The decisive moment is an abstraction from the linear procession of time, a snapshot taken from a context where something precedes and something else follows.
The intrigue of Cartier-Bresson’s work is sometimes explicable in theatrical terms; there is an unexplained mood and a mysterious atmosphere. We gaze at a frozen moment in time where the meaning is ambivalent, where we read it and cannot read it, at the same time. It has narrative meaning, and we are fascinated because in normal circumstances we do not have that privileged insight. Life unfolds around us in myriad ways as we walk around public spaces with hundreds of other people who have complicated personal lives just like ours, and we ignore or cannot recognise these complex layers of meaning. We encounter people in a superficial way on a dramaturgical basis i.e. according to implicit social expectations, rarely going any deeper. A camera is able to freeze, isolate and encapsulate configurations of human and environmental exchange for our leisurely and poetic perusal, similar to Wordsworth’s idea of emotion recollected in tranquility.
In ancient Greek philosophy, there is a concept that refers to a critical position in time and space, called kairos. Initially it concerned spatial considerations, but the meaning changed and then incorporated temporal factors also. Kairos is a decisive moment that breaks continuity and progression: an intervention in the rhetoric of the world. In Greek mythology the strategic interventions of Athena, goddess of both war and wisdom, may be loosely related to the principle of kairos. When people conflict or a situation is in unresolved stalemate, Athena appears and her arbitration is accepted as just and correct. Kairos is also the name of a mythological figure who is eventually endowed with the status and attributes of a god, thereby suggesting a transformative potential.
For many years Plutarch served as one of the two priests at the temple of Apollo at Delphi, twenty miles from his home. By his writings and lectures Plutarch he became famous in the Roman empire, yet he continued to reside where he was born and actively participated in local affairs. At his country estate, guests from around the empire congregated for serious conversation, presided over by Plutarch in his marble chair. Many of these dialogues were recorded and published, and the 78 essays and other works which survived are known collectively as the Moralia, in which he can read “in all works of art beauty is, so to speak, the product of a large quantity of numbers that achieve a single kairos by a system of proportion and harmony�?. Kairos is classed alongside the principles of kallos (beauty) and summetria (harmony), expressing parts in relation to each other and the whole, a point of equilibrium in a fluctuating world.
The decisive moment concept implies an implicate aesthetic order, and a temporary release or disclosure of meaning at the heart of a more general disorder or banality. The photographer’s task is one of alertness, as opposed to visual aggression, avoiding the more anaesthetised sensibilities typical of city living. The Greeks called this acedia, the nonchalance and indifference where we filter out much of the surrounding information to minimise distraction and stress but which also filters out other human beings, and the significance of their lives, as they unfold on the street. Cartier-Bresson described a photograph as “ a condensed form of thought that is the language of photography�?. In other words, it expresses the interior world and thought-feeling life of its creator. Optical technology is especially philosophical in relation to previous representational methods like painting, because to a large extent you are freed from technical limitations. It is more direct than a drawing, instantaneous rather than a protracted watercolour project. Thought is like that: it occurs in quick successive moments. However the ease with which we now create photographs (especially with digital methods) is conducive to acedia, as much as philosophical reflection.