Henri Cartier-Bresson

Whilst walking along New Bond Street in London today I happened on a Cartier-Bresson exhibition in The Fine Art Society gallery, so I couldn't resist looking in. Whilst I usually advocate that the right place for photos is in a book, not on a wall, these were interesting mostly for their historic context. I particularly liked this one of Matisse in 1944 but as the original signed print was £17500 plus 5% tax I plumped for a large postcard. It is on until 29 October so if you are in the area it's worth a look.

Another thing struck me - I have a dislike of black-and-white photos and especially from a digital camera, but these worked for me because Henri wasn't overtly exploiting the monochrome effect but was just using the technology available at the time and somehow that comes through.

Ok so he didn't use Pentax as far as I know but I just thought this might be of interest.

His photographs are wonderful. You are lucky to have seen the exhibition but I am sorry you cannot appreciate the beauty of monochrome pictures.

Totally agree with Andrew - one of my greatest photographic pleasures is seeing something in the viewfinder that I know will work well produced as a mono image and then finding out if I was correct. With the right subject - a well produced monochrome image can have much more impact than colour. If I were to choose my favourite 10 images I have taken over the past 5 years - I suspect at least half would be mono.

Carl

I'm afraid the joys of mono are mostly lost to me as well .... That squinting thing you're supposed to do in order to visualise the graphical and tonal contrast aspects of the scene,.... Well, need I say, not much happens

That classic 'decisive moment' mono street style has little impact on me ....I too see it as simply a consequence of the available technology, and a compromise at that. I do see something special in much simpler, graphic styled B and W images, say of architecture or sculpture, where there are bold defined lines between stark tonal contrasts ... Seems to work well then, although I'd always want to see the colours as well side by side.

I think the last time I posted something like this I was told I needed to learn more and do a course ...

I don't know about learn more Nigel, but I'd always encourage us all to look more. Waterstones is a good place to browse the latest photography books, and some of them are breathtaking, far beyond my sense of vision for sure.

Some are monochrome, some are colour, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that some stretch way beyond the photo norm for most of us. Cartier-Bresson doesn't excite my imagination, but there are plenty that do.

My meal breaks are now fuIly occupied! Waterstones it is ....(just have to hope that I don't get side-tracked and just end up looking at everything about HDR, Exposure Technique, Wireless Flash Systems, Photoshop Etc Etc)...

I'm with Andrew and Carl, I think good quality black and white photography can be very exciting. And I'm sorry Nigel can't appreciate the 'decisive moment' in photography, this is truly an art form, whether mono or colour, lifted from mere craft to high art, never more so than in the work HCB. Only still photography can capture this illusive element which every street photographer strives to achieve.
David

Apology accepted It was more the black and white bit I was saying I wasn't so keen on .... Can you have decisive moments in colour too...? I might like those .

In W.H.Smith you can look at a magazine which is dedicated to monochrome photography. It's wonderful and highly inspirational. After flicking through it, I never want to take another colour image, well obviously you have to start with colour...

In the bad old days, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. "Porridge" was on the telly and cars had petrol engines with carburettors, I used to take two cameras on holiday, one loaded with slide film, the other with Ilford FP4. That taught me which photos worked best in colour and which in B/W, because film was very expensive. Now it's free.

Which is nice.

HCB was a great, no-nonsense photojournalist, one of his books has some shots with the film perforations running across the photos ('Lomo' style), quite how he manged it I don't know. That said, apart from the shot of the guy jumping over the puddle mirroring the circus advert behind him, most that I've seen are not that memorable.

Mono is an accident of technology (either during capture, transmission or printing - while colour film was available from the '40s, newspapers didn't print in colour until the late '80s).

If I want a mono image, I shoot mono film, the thought of converting colour to a 'greyscale' image (film or digital) seems alien to me. Admittedly I'm a film enthusiast and loading shooting and processing film is all part of the experience. Digitally, if funds were no problem I might go for a Leica Monochrome, but the thought of a mono sensor guessing pixel colours courtesy of a bayer filter only to convert them back to mono doesn't excite me in the slightest.

Note to Pentax: If you can get the pixel shifting in the K-3ii to cancel out the effect of the bayer filter that would be an interesting mono development.

John.

But John, processing original colour files in Photoshop or, even better something like Perfect Effects, is wonderful. You're not stuck with one particular film's rendition of grey tones as the sliders allow you to blend whatever you like to suit a scene. You can dodge and burn. "Print" hard or soft contrast. You can even add grain if you like.

And no cold evenings spent in a smelly darkroom.

The 'decisive moment' was apparent in a number of H C-B's photos, but I am sure that at least one was set up: a running girl caught in a ray of sunshine in a shadowed italian courtyard. Anyhow, it still works. The photo at the top of this thread would not be very memorable if it's just of some old bloke in his flat; however we know it is Matisse which raises our interest. Furthermore H C-B lays great emphasis on the doves, one of which Matisse is holding whilst sketching, and which is of greater significance if we recall Matisse's iconic image of the dove of peace and the date when taken of 1944. So we see a great artist in the act of creation with references which would have been recognised by all at the time.

It looks like I have started a bit of a debate on monochrome so here's my pennyworth. Before colour B/W film was all that was available so the photos were an 'honest' use of the technology available -it wasn't a deliberate negation of colour. Pure black and white hardly ever exist in nature; even where it might appear so the surfaces are coloured by reflected light. For this reason representational artists avoid the use of black, white and flat grey straight out the tube but prefer to mix black or grey from complementary colours. White for highlights is usually mixed with a tinge of colour for maximum contrast against a complementary background colour. Classical oil technique for dark areas is to build up several layers of coloured glazes to render subtleties in the shadows and greater depth. Colour is what gives an image life and a modern sensor is designed to record every subtlety of the spectrum, so to alter the image to monochrome is not an appropriate use of that medium. From that standpoint I can more readily find images on black/white film more acceptable, and occasionally a minimalistic image has qualities approaching a Chinese ink drawing. But for instance an autumn woodland scene in monochrome, I have to ask why? Devoid of colour, devoid of life.

Robl, you where lucky to be able to go to this exhibition. I envy you.

The old photographers like H C-B , Alfred Stieglitz etc and later Robert Cappa Created images which I can only dream about. I can not see myself ever to have the feel or instinct to photograph like they did.

All they're where B&W, but you don't even take note of it. It is just the way they where done.
It would not have mattered if they where in B&W or colour.

There are some extremely easy to look at black & white pictures. the same goes for colour.

Of course the early photographers in praxis only had B&W. colour was available as early as 1938.
The German Leica photographers bought and developed the films in the USA. They where shipped by Zeppelin to the USA to be processed and then returned the same way. But the quality and was low and the cost high. Also there was a lengthy delay from taking the picture to getting the final print.

Many of the great ones insisted of processing the negatives and print them self. They often had there own developer formulas which they kept secret.

By the way, this old masters never worried so much about stuff like edge sharpness and lines per mm,
but more about the motive. This made them famous.

I bought my first Spotmatic in 1970. I was so impressed by this camera which let me compose my pictures already on a screen before even taking it. before the Spotmatic I had a couple of Leicas, a IIIc and a M3.

However, the way the Spotmatic blew me away. I got so enthusiastic, the I bought a enlarger, developing set , bulk film loader and a variety of bulk films. All B&W. I liked colour, but it was to expensive and to complicated for me to process it .

In my enthusiasm, I joined the Melbourne Camera Club. This was the most prestigious camera club in the Melbourne area. at least, that's what the members said. A bunch of stuck up farts they where.
Anyway, I did my bit by enlarging my negatives to about 10 x 15 and brought them for show. No problems with that.

However one day the club invited , as I was told: a well known and expert local photographer to criticize
and comment on our exhibition of photographs. He was a little skinny runt with black hair and some white streeks in it. He wore a black and white herring bone suit. I don't think there was any colour in or on him at all. he also wore white gloves.

All prints where in B&W except mine. A while before I started with Kodacolor film and had the prints enlarged by Kodak to the same size as my B&W. It cost me an arm and a leg and I managed only to get a few done every now and then.
Well the expert moved around from picture to picture and gave his opinion. He criticized and gave praise to others. The various owners nodded in agreement and aah't and ooh't and looked at him in admiration. Right on the end he arrived at my print.
He looked at it. Then said, he would not bother to comment on the little colour print, because a.) there was no future in colour and b.) he just wasn't going to .
That's when the argument started. I asked him, If he was afraid of using colour or if he just didn't understand it? he then started ranting and raving and telling everybody, that he was a well known
entity in his field and anyhow he didn't come to be insulted. Especially by someone who had the audacity to photograph in colour. The management of the club the came to me and asked me to leave.
This was the end of my membership in the Melbourne camera club. I never joined any other camera club after this.

A while after this experience Colour developing and printing was becoming less expensive and from then on I did both, colour and B&W. I still have some framed B&W prints Hanging. They still look like new after about 45 years, The colour prints from this area faded when exposed to light.


Regards, Horst

Good for you Horst!