Photograph: Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum PhotosĬartier-Bresson always emphasised the importance of composition, and liked to “instinctively fix a geometric pattern” into which a chosen subject fitted. What Cartier-Bresson understood by the decisive moment is best explained by the famous quote from his lengthy introduction to the book: “Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression.”įrance. What The Decisive Moment did above all was enshrine the term in the collective photographic consciousness, shaping several ensuing generations of photographers. Post-Magnum – and post second world war – he was driven to make images that mattered more in terms of their social and political rather than aesthetic import. As the curator Clément Chéroux points out in his essay for the new edition, the pre-Magnum Cartier-Bresson was obsessed with form, and creating his now signature style. Today, a photographer is more likely to make the move from photojournalism into art (not least because that’s where the big money lies), but Cartier-Bresson took the opposite tack. It is divided into two chronological and geographical sections: the first spans the years 1932 to 1947 and is made up of photographs taken in the west the second spans 1947 to 1952 and was shot mostly in the east. He was also more aware of the value of his extensive archive, which he meticulously trawled to select the 126 images included in the book. Having co-founded the now-famous Magnum photo agency in 1947 with Robert Capa and David “Chim” Seymour, Cartier-Bresson had travelled widely on assignments, most productively to India and China, by the time it was published. (The cultivated Cartier-Bresson was also friends with Jean Cocteau and Joan Miró, who designed the cover for his book The Europeans three years later.)Įxtraordinarily, given that he had taken up photography seriously in the early 1930s, The Decisive Moment was Cartier-Bresson’s first self-conceived and edited book – 1947’s The Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson was a catalogue for an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. That The Decisive Moment belongs to a different time is immediately apparent from its cover, which is not a photograph but a signature cut-out by Henri Matisse, who offered to design the cover when Cartier-Bresson showed him a dummy copy. Sixty-two years on, it still carries the weight of its initial importance – even if the notion of the decisive moment no longer holds sway as it once did staged photography, conceptual strategies and digitally manipulated images have all but rendered it old-fashioned except to purists, photojournalists and street photographers. Now, having long been out of print and beyond the financial reach of all but the most serious collectors ( a French first edition will set you back £2,750) The Decisive Moment has finally been republished.
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