Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/07/03
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Hi, Rich, I'm terrible at remembering titles, but this one I know: "Derriere la gare Saint-Lazare, Paris 1932". And you're right, it's cropped! I've seen a photo of the neg, too. It's cropped, no doubt about it. I think it's the exception that proves the rule. I read an interview of his long time developer, Pierre Gassmann in the French issue of Photo, May 1998. He said: "D'ailleirs la legende qui veut qu'il refusait tout recadrage est simplement nee du fait que c'etait rarement necessaire." Which, if my very rusty French is half-way accurate means roughly, "The legend that he refused to crop was simply born of the fact that it was rarely necessary". Which would lead one to believe that it ~did~ happen, at least sometimes. regards, frank tripspud wrote: > Hi! > > From this webpage of a review by John Banville, 'Secret Geometry' > of HCB's "The Man, the Image and the World" > the entire artcle is here: > > http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16413 > > he states: > > And one cannot leave it alone. One wants, one tries, to frame the precise > question that will provoke the revealing answer. It is > impossible. Cartier-Bresson has always been fascinated by the East—his first > wife, Ratna Mohini, was Javanese—and in the > face of all one's efforts to elicit from him a solution to the riddle of his > abandonment of photography he maintains an attitude of > merry serenity worthy of a Zen master. Which is what he is, really. The > "decisive moment" is everything, the moment at which > the artist catches the world in flagrante, unaware of how much it is revealing > of itself. It is an extraordinary fact that > Cartier-Bresson's photographs come to us as they were taken: no darkroom magic > has been performed. He does not even > crop his pictures and refuses to allow others to do so. This is a truly > miraculous eye. > > Well, I recall seeing the original negative of his shot in the '30s of > the guy leaping > the puddle and it's way cropped using about a third of the negative. Maybe he > decided > not to crop later. > > Cheers, > > Rich Lahrson > Berkeley, California > tripspud@transbay.net > > -- > To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html - -- "What a senseless waste of human life" - -The Customer in Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html