"Behind the Gare St. Lazar," Henri Cartier-Bresson, All rights reserved
The great Henri Cartier-Bresson, apparently as good at concocting bon mots as making pictures, once famously remarked : "I'm a hunter, not a cook." In other words, 'I shoot 'em, somebody else takes care of the rest.'
I've always wondered about this remark. OK, let's say Cartier-Bresson gives the film to an experienced lab person to process & make contact sheets. C-B marks a few frames, then turns the contacts over to editors who know good work as well as what they need for their stories. A skilled printer takes care of enlargements, which are then sized, cropped & laid out by designers. C-B gives his blessing & takes another sip of his excellent wine. Voila!
Vraiment?
For me, shooting is always about chasing Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment." My pictures never do more than approximate what I envision. (That's why I keep shooting.)
It's only the decisions that come after shooting (the cooking) for which I am able to feel truly responsible. Those decisions -- hundreds of them -- are completely in my control.
Right now I'm at work selecting & presenting a set of my pictures for a contest. It's a form of self-torture. Issues of self-esteem arise (maybe I should say self-hatred). Deep-seated fears of inadequacy threaten to paralyze. Despite my best efforts, my fears morph into fantasies of bias & corruption on the part of the judges & a kind of childish anger that there is no perfectly realized picture, no perfect justice.
I wish I could be just a hunter.
2 comments:
I don't HCB allowed any cropping, but otherwise I think that's how he played it. He missed out, the best conversations always happen in the kitchen, at least at the parties I go to. Of course he didn't have a kitchen to cook in like we do.
Editing can be rough, i find it brings on serious procrastination, indigestion and all around discontent, at least for me.
HCB is a tough role model, like chasing Michael Jordan, pretty hard for mere mortals.
I used to worry about those things. Now I don't. It's what you end up with that counts.
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