[Leica] HCB

[kargue at sympatico.ca (Kevin Argue)]

The death of HCB today means a great loss to the photo world. I know in the
past that some
Luggers have been critical or less than impressed with the man and his
photos. As a working photog I began to appreciate them in the early 90's. I
, like other photographers travelled around with multiple motor driven
nikons and bags full of lenses. On one occasion I was covering a Buffalo
Bills game and my freelancer friend from Buffalo had 5 nikon F3 bodies with
lenses from 24 to 600. During the game he shot 30 rolls of Tri-X! The New
York Times used
one photo. When I bought my first Leica M4P and began to shoot with it I
began to think more
of each individual image, inspired by HCB. Once I added my M6, I began to do
more news jobs with the rangefinders. More and more of my assignments for
the Toronto  Star (Canada's largest paper) were done with the rangefinder. I
even photogrphed Canadian radio personality
Peter Gzowski of CBC towards the end of his career for the New York Times.
On the day of that
shoot his staff wondered where my equipment was so I pulled out my M6-- they
looked confused! I used  2 or 3 rolls of Tri-X and shipped to New York. The
Times was expecting more film but did admit each frame was different  and
unique. The picture was used on page 4 on the International page.
Cartier-Bresson showed me to look or watch for that moment when
everything comes together---That Decisive Moment!!
My most published photo of a little girl on a streetcar shot on a M4P, black
and white film, taken
in Cuba was just that kind of HCB photo.
Thank- Henri for a wonderful body of work and inspiration.

Kevin Argue
St. Catharines, Ontario
Canada