Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/01/11

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Totally false?? HCB and l'instant décisif
From: Dominique PELLISSIER <pelliss@droit-eco.univ-nancy2.fr>
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 08:57:56 +0100

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