Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/01/11
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 22:52 11/01/99 +0100, Erwin wrote : First of all I did not say that HCB posed his subjects as Doisneau did in some of his pictures. I did not say that HCB forced his subjects to pose for him. I said that the image of HCB as a person who patiently waited for the decisive moment to arrive and then without hesitation would capture it, is not the whole truth. HCB influenced the scene he would like to capture into *his* view of a perfect image by dancing around the scene and taking many many pictures of a scene. No one could jump around and firing a camera (even a Leica) as a Gatling gun without being noticed and thus he consciously influences the unfoulding of the act. Read the story by John Malcolm Brinnin, an American journalist, who worked for four months with HCB on his (HCB) "America in Passing" documentary. Did you know that HCB took pictures in a restaurant from a person who suffered an epileptic, even impeding the helpers who tried to help, as he insisted that he first could take pictures of the man. Brinnin observes with surprise that HCB takes hundreds of pictures a day, shooting "like a Gatling gun at the same subject". >Erwin > ############# Is HCB a shifty person ? In his own paper <italic>l'instant décisif </italic>(Les cahiers de la photographie, n°18, p.13, 1986), he writes : "You must approach the subject <italic>à pas de loup (=</italic>very carefully<italic>)</italic>, even if it is a still picture.To be all smirks and smiles, but to have an acute eye. No hustle ; one does not whip water before fishing.If not, the photographer becomes somebody insupportably aggressive". Erwin, you write exactly the contrary and you present HCB as a predator in front of its prey. I can't believe the story of the epileptic man.That was a poxy thing to do.Have you the reference of Brinnin's text ? Dominique Pellissier