Posts Tagged ‘street photography’

picturenarrative / some rights reserved, used with permission

When I visited the This is Now Flickr group for the first time, I expected to find more pictures like this, very Henri Cartier-Bresson. I do love all the creative photography you can find there, but, sometimes, to capture the essence of now, you don’t need the most fancy equipment or photo manipulation software.

Sometimes, the smaller your camera, the better, so you may be able to hide it while you tiptoe towards your subject, hoping that they won’t notice you. This is how the French photographer, one of the founders of the the world-famous Magnum Photos agency, composed his jaw-dropping portfolio.

His pictures look like drawings; an astonishing combination of geometric shapes and human detail created in one click. I remember when I first saw Behind the Gare St. Lazare projected on a big screen during a photography lesson, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Almost 15 years have passed and I still get goose bumps when I look at it!

“To take a photograph means to recognize – simultaneously and within a fraction of a second – both the fact itself and the rigorous organisation of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one’s head, one’s eye, and one’s heart on the same axis.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (22.08.1908 – 03.08.2004)

You can find Ana on Twitter and on Flickr.

tagged black & white henri cartier-bresson Photography street photography

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