Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/05/25

[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]

Subject: Re: RE: [Leica] The Critic
From: mail at steveunsworth.co.uk (mail@steveunsworth.co.uk)
Date: Tue May 25 10:38:14 2004

There's a DVD produced by the French/German TV channel Arte of several
10 minute films where photographers, including HCB, describe their
contact sheets and what they were trying to achieve. Yes he was a
prolific snapper.

I saw the big retrospective the year before last. No doubt about his
greatness in my mind.

Steve


"B. D. Colen" <bdcolen@earthlink.net> wrote on 25.05.2004, 19:23:29:
> Here we go again - They weren't all "staged," but neither were virtually
> any of them "decisive moments" if what you mean by decisive moment is
> that in an instant he saw a photo before his eye, whipped his camera up,
> and captured it in a single shot.
> 
> I take the decisive moment to be that instant when you see the
> photographic possibilities in a scene or even before you, not the
> instant you push the shutter release, as you may push it dozens, if not
> hundreds of times around a single scene or event - which the contacts
> show HCB did. He was a prodigious shooter, and he  really "worked"
> scenes, bouncing around like a kangaroo on speed.
> 
> As someone once observed - was it HCB himself - the decisive moment was
> the instant when he saw the image on a contact sheet.
> 
> B. D.