Henry Lopez Reviews Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a french photographer and painter born in 1908.  He is best known as one of the first to begin the genre of street photography and the candid photo.  Cartier-Bresson was all about capture the world in the decisive moment, to capture something beautiful and natural.  He preferred to work with a smaller camera to avoid people behaving differently when the camera is pointed on them.  This is something I truly admire because he wanted the raw beauty of human nature no matter what that looked like.  It was really something special that he was able to capture as opposed to today where we know that everyone has a camera in their pocket so we therefor mostly behave more reserved in public.  I get inspiration from Cartier-Bresson, in the sense that I too want to capture the emotion and action of people as naturally as possible.  He not only had these candid moments, but he beautifully composed his shots and created those moments of raw wonder in the day.  Cartier-Bresson  was all about capturing the moment in transition, the in between, this gives life to the photograph and elevates it beyond just a static image.  We as an audience can visualize this exact moment, it doesn't feel staged, we're not looking at props, we share this wonderfully mundane and beautiful moment in time.