I don’t think I have ever stolen a book from a library, although many do disappear, and I have bought quite a number when libraries have decided to de-accession them. Ex-library books are often found as bargains too in the lists or shelves of second-hand bookshops, and I’ve bought a few this way too, though I’ve found several of them have had pages removed by people who apparently take a razor blade with them when they visit their library – and its often the pages with nude images that disappear. Of course some librarians have felt it their duty to censor such images from the books in their collections too.
But I was severely tempted, back in the 1970s, at the school where I was then working, and setting up an O Level photography course. This 2000+ pupil comprehensive had a large ‘Art’ section to its library, and among the several hundred volumes was I think a single photography book, Cartier-Bresson’s ‘The Decisive Moment‘, with its Matisse cover.
The most senior of the several teachers of Art turned out to be something of a fan of HC-B, and had either got the school to buy a copy back when it was still in print or perhaps had even donated it to the library. I got them to buy a few more photography books to go with it, and took ‘The Decisive Moment’ home with me over the summer holidays. School libraries in those days were not highly protected and staff regularly walked in and out with piles of books for use by their classes, and I could have hung on to it and probably no one would have noticed. But I’m basically an honest guy and I took it back for the start of the Autumn term.
Later, when I moved to a college, as well as the college library we had a shelf or two of books in our photography base, and I’d often leave some of my own books there for use by students. I wish all of them had been honest too – and more careful with books. Much later I found that one of my colleagues was actually encouraging students to cut out pictures from them to put into their scrapbooks and personal studies, and I stopped taking books in, though I still lent many personally to students – and most came back, if some rather dog-eared and a few with broken backs.
What reminded me of this was an article in The Guardian around Christmas by Sean O’Hagan on the republication by Steidl of ‘The Decisive Moment’, which first came out in 1952. He comments – as I and many others have done before – of the difference between the French and English titles and its significance. ‘Images a la Sauvette‘, often translated as ‘Images on the Run’ has a feeling of illegality, of moments stolen from the flux; there is an edginess about it, something which is appropriate to some of HC-B’s early work. ‘The Decisive Moment‘ is rather more static and monumental (despite HC-B’s definition which O’Hagan quotes), more fitted to what I find the least satisfying of his images, what one well-known American photographer called his ‘waiters’, where the photographer had clearly found a particular location that satisfied his feeling for composition and waited for someone to walk or run into its core.
O’Hagan writes “For me, what is interesting about the republishing of The Decisive Moment is that it has happened too late. The book is now a historical artefact.” For many photographers that became true back in the 1950’s and it was certainly so for those of us who came across it in the 1970s. We might still admire HC-B, but we didn’t take him as a model, and although very flattered I wasn’t entirely happy when someone compared my work to his back in my early years in the medium. The critical watershed was 1958-9, when Robert Frank‘s ‘Les Americains / The Americans‘ was published first in France and then in the UK, calling into question and sometimes deliberately toying with or parodying the work of Cartier-Bresson. By the 1970s we were also looking at the work of photographers like Friedlander, Winogrand, Arbus… Cartier-Bresson was history, if a very illustrious history, and of course still active. Younger French photopgraphers too were redefining photojournalism.
I probably won’t be buying ‘The Decisive Moment’. At € 98.00 it seems a little expensive (currently you can buy it in the UK for around £52, around a third less than the full price) though I think it is likely to be a good investment, as it is already on offer for rather more than this though some on-line photography bookshops.
Billed as an exact replica in fact it isn’t. In fine detail digital artefacts are clearly visible. Blemishes on the original prints, as reproduced in the original, have been digitally removed. Darkroom spotting on the originals and unspotted “hairs” all removed. I regret for me the digital ( and this is not a tirade against digital in general) tidying up is very sad and removes that direct connection to the original work we had hoped for.
O’Hagan writes of an “Historical Artefact” he appears to think that is a derogative term, moved on no doubt we have but we should be mindful of our foundations.
Looking at Paul Graham’s “a shimmer of possibility” agains Frank’s “The Americans” one could easily say the same.
Interesting to read Chris, I’ve not been able to compare the two versions. Of course standards of reproduction have changed since it came out, but an exact as possible replica, warts and all is what the publicity suggested and what you and I think most buyers would have wanted.
I have his 1968 ‘The World of Henri Cartier-Bresson’ – is still available second-hand at a reasonable price – as well as later books so don’t feel a need to buy ‘The Decisive Moment’ to appreciate his contribution to our medium.
I’m afraid I’ve been unable to find any reason to look at “a shimmer of possibility” after seeing it at the Photographers’ Gallery.