Pages: 1 2 [3]   Go Down

Author Topic: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking  (Read 17088 times)

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
« Reply #40 on: June 24, 2013, 11:02:15 am »

Scientific proof that white bread is 27.5 times as popular as Ansel Adams.

Cross examination?
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

Slobodan Blagojevic

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 18087
  • When everyone thinks the same, nobody thinks
    • My website
Re: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
« Reply #41 on: June 24, 2013, 01:51:16 pm »

Russ, the only thing you have to subject to cross examination is your calculator.

White bread would be only 12 times as popular as AA, but 27.5 as HCB. Which, based on simple rules of formal logic and math that require no cross examination, would still result in Adams being 2.3 times more popular than Henri!

Eat that, Russ (instead of white bread)!  ;D

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
« Reply #42 on: June 24, 2013, 02:48:37 pm »

You're right, Slobodan. I fumble-fingered the calculator. But here's another interesting popularity comparison that shows that beer is 99 times more popular than Ansel, and that street photography is 6 times more popular than landscape photography. That ought to settle the matter.
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
« Reply #43 on: June 24, 2013, 03:55:31 pm »

Well, I Know Ernst Haas was from Austria, I was just responding to a question of who (photographer) inspired me, never said he was American.



No, the point was that non-Americans are/were also very influential. I wasn't criticising you.

;-)

Rob C

AFairley

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1486
Re: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
« Reply #44 on: June 24, 2013, 03:56:03 pm »

I always have found AA's photos to be sort of boring, sort of drained of vitality.  (There, I finally said it.)  Unlike E Weston's images which are simply bursting with life.  The most interesting thing to me about HCB is how boring the stuff he did on assignment is compared to the street stuff for which he is best known.  But that's the great thing about "Art," isn't it, there's something for every taste.  
Logged

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
« Reply #45 on: June 24, 2013, 04:19:27 pm »

Thanks, Alan, for saying that. If you've read any of my posts on HCB you know that I agree. Henri made fine art when he was a flâneur with a camera, but on assignment he simply was a very good reporter. The difference between his early work and, say, The People of Moscow, is instructive.

And I agree that Weston's stuff was much more passionate than Ansel's. I was gobbling up both men's work back in the late fifties and early sixties, but what I got from Ansel was useful information on darkroom work and the zone system. What I got from Edward was a sense of passion. Ansel's "Georgia O'Keefe and Orville Cox," which essentially ends up as the human equivalent of a landscape, and Weston's pictures of Tina Modotti (and I'm not talking just about the nudes) illustrate the difference.
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

Slobodan Blagojevic

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 18087
  • When everyone thinks the same, nobody thinks
    • My website
Re: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
« Reply #46 on: June 24, 2013, 04:32:51 pm »

... beer is 99 times more popular than Ansel..

Does it come as a surprise to anyone that beer and white bread are so much more popular than art and environment in the heaviest nation on Earth? I mean, Earth core must be caving in under that weight, and California is even cracking under it. ;D

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
« Reply #47 on: June 24, 2013, 04:36:51 pm »

 ;D ;D ;D ;D
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

nemo295

  • Guest
Re: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
« Reply #48 on: June 24, 2013, 05:28:35 pm »

This thread has gone from Cartier-Bresson to the apocalypse in only three pages. I'm impressed.
Logged

petermfiore

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2705
    • Peter Fiore Fine Art
Re: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
« Reply #49 on: June 24, 2013, 05:32:15 pm »

It could have been Two if we all didn't mince our words.


Peter

nemo295

  • Guest
Re: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
« Reply #50 on: June 24, 2013, 05:34:03 pm »

We'll do better next time.
Logged

BJL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 6600
Re: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
« Reply #51 on: June 28, 2013, 03:36:21 pm »

What both Ansel and Edward Weston did was break away from the pictorialists and make "straight" photographs that were tack sharp and specific.

Neither of them did anything really new. They just did things better.

Henri, on the other hand, grabbed the smallest camera around and began shooting people unposed.

Firstly, your claim of "nothing really new, just better" is somewhat contradicted by your previous comment, and the role of Adams et al in pushing landscape photography towards developing its own style, rather than imitating painting too much.

Secondly, the put-down of "not new, just better" can be thrown at almost any innovator if you research their background enough --- including Cartier-Bresson. He had antecedents in street photography, like Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard. Both were better known for their painting, but Cartier-Bresson was also a painter before and after his time with photography. Carter-Bresson arguably advanced that facet of photography through a combination of talent and the arrival of better tools: his Leicas vs the Kodaks available to Bonnard and Vuillard in the late 1800's.

Thirdly, it is bemusing to read the argument that, in essence, Adam's work is inherently less important because it was mostly landscapes rather than people: what is the name of this site again?


I vote for considering AA and HCB as great and influential contributers in very different aspects of photography, and putting aside any factional claims about which was greater.
Logged

BJL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 6600
Re: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
« Reply #52 on: June 28, 2013, 03:48:01 pm »

Somebody somewhere (and some time ago for most of us) some single photographer inspired you to either pick up a camera or learn to use the one you had.

Who was that photographer?
My father. I suspect that this (and/or ”mother") is the most common answer from those of us who have been photographic enthusiasts since childhood. What tiny fraction of photographers needed a world-famous guru to first inspire them?

I suppose I am just not into hero-worshipping cults (and inter-cult warfare) like some people.
Logged

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Living and Looking
« Reply #53 on: June 28, 2013, 05:37:34 pm »

Thanks for your comments, BJL, but I stand by what I said.
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.
Pages: 1 2 [3]   Go Up