Ma passion n'a jamais été pour la photographie «en elle même», mais pour la possibilité, en s'oubliant soi-même, d'enregistrer dans une fraction de seconde l'émotion procurée par le sujet et la beauté de la forme, c'est à dire, une géométrie éveillé par ce qui est offert. Le tir photographique est un de mes carnets de croquis.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson -- The Mind's Eye: writings on photography and photographers
My passion has never been for photography "in itself," but for the possibility, in forgetting oneself, of recording in a split-second the emotion of the subject, and the beauty of the form; that is, a geometry awakened by what is offered. The photographic shot is one of my sketchpads.
I have made photographs at different times in my life for different reasons.
When I was a boy, I was much more interested in the cameras themselves -- the gadgetry -- than in the photos they might make. I had a hand-me-down Kodak dual-lens reflex, a little tiny HIT spy camera (which looked like a 35mm camera shrunken down to toy-size), a Kodak Instamatic, and a Polaroid Swinger. They were toys for me.
When I was twenty, I started to think about photographs as works of art. I read everything I could get my hands on, about photographs, photographers, and technique (in those days it was easy to find a copy of Images à la sauvette | The Decisive Moment by Henri Cartier-Bresson; now it is a legend, the phrase having passed into the language; but hardly any young photographer has ever seen that epoch-making volume). I worked in a factory for a summer and saved every penny to buy a Leica CL. Then I travelled, and taught myself the practice of "street photography" and "available light photography" (there really is no way to learn it in a classroom). It was a frustrating moment, because I felt that it was not enough to insert myself into situations and to photograph them, but also to make beautifully-composed images (this is the bad influence of Magnum's celebrated photographers). There was something missing.
The theft of my Leica CL by -- of all people -- a taxicab driver in New York, precipitated a move to fancy cameras. First, a highly-automated Canon A1, then a hardly-automated Canon F1, and finally, a Pentax LX. They were lovely cameras. Choosing lenses was always fun. However, what was really happening: I was searching for an elusive satisfaction by changing the equipment.
My life changed. I stopped making photographs as a serious activity for about ten years. I stopped even thinking about photographs.
About six years ago, I realized that I wasn't paying attention to the present ... in my daily life, in my work, and my private life, I lived with an eye on the future, but not on the present. I wasn't paying attention to moments as I lived them: instead I occupied myself with the consequences, and with the results, not the process. In my opinion, this is not a good way to live.
So I decided to resume taking pictures -- not "making photographs" -- in order to develop again the faculty of paying perfect attention to what is right in front of me, and to the moment. To teach myself to see again. Significantly, I decided not to consider anything which might happen after the shutter has been released. That means, I have abandoned any attempt to compose a picture. I have decided not to worry about the result. Indeed, I don't always even bother to look through the viewfinder.
I don't know that the results are pleasing; but I no longer care. What matters is that, freed from the tyrannies of "composition" and of "beauty", I finally enjoy photography. I also think that what my pictures lose in beauty, they gain in spontaneity, in liveliness.
Now I say, My photographs are as bad as I know how to make them, and I mean it.
You can see what I mean at my photo-journal, Sprezzatura.
Comments