ICP window with Cartier-Bresson photograph

I went up to ICP (the International Center of Photography) today to see the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit. It’s actually paired with an exhibit of Martin Munkacsi, a photographer who influenced Bresson, and who became fabulously successful doing fashion and magazine work. No doubt, Munkacsi made numerous vivid images–dancers, athletes, and Nazis. The latter he treated with the same sense of style as he did the former. But it eventually became obvious that he, a Hungarian Jew, was better off working for Carmel Snow at Harper’s Bazaar in New York. His best work expresses an optimistic sense of modernism and absolutely deserves to be seen.

Cartier-Bresson is the far more complex and important photographer, and I have a number of things to say about the exhibit and his work in general. A personal note, first. I began studying photography at age 18 with Virgil Rowe, who offered classes in his tiny clapboard house in Williamsburg, Virginia, the town I grew up in. Virgil was a photographer himself, though I never saw much of his work and can’t say that it was exceptional. But he was an exceptional teacher. I learned basic black and white developing and printing from him–I can still remember fumbling with my first roll of film in the dark trying to thread it onto a steel spool. What Virgil did best, however, was to convey a sense of passion and possibility. He believed that photographs could reach the highest levels of art just like painting or music. And his favorite photographer was a Frenchman who I had never heard of named Cartier-Bresson.

Thanks to my first teacher, Cartier-Bresson became the photographer I most identified with, and his well-known concept of the decisive moment was something that I quickly and instinctively absorbed. Although I’ve moved through all kinds of influences over the years, Cartier-Bresson’s way of taking in the visual world remains embedded in my approach to photography.

To be continued…