推荐各位一定要读读这篇文章。

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Who was Henri Cartier-Bresson?
Dean Gallery, Edinburgh

Nathalie Rothschild
posted 23 September 2005

During his 95-year-long life, Henri Cartier-Bresson travelled around the world, documenting major events of the twentieth century and the people that were involved in them. From his street photography and records of daily life to his portraits of political leaders such as Che Guevara and of artistic and literary figures such as Picasso, Matisse, Sartre and Beckett, Cartier-Bresson's oeuvre demonstrates at once a non-discriminatory stand towards photographic subjects and an acute sensibility to select the key events and personalities that shaped the world he portrayed. With his finger firmly on the pulse of history and his ability to situate himself within 'decisive moments' - while at the same time keeping a necessary distance - Cartier-Bresson managed to balance immersion and involvement with the photojournalist's inevitable position as an outsider.

The Cartier-Bresson retrospective at the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh is a collection of more than 200 photographs, drawings and paintings of the late French master. The exhibition seeks to answer the question 'who was Henri Cartier-Bresson?' and to draw a portrait of 'the man behind the myth'. This explains why photographs and mementos of his childhood, adolescence, family life and of the war have been included. The collection, which was first shown in Paris, was assembled by Cartier-Bresson himself together with his close friend Robert Delpire, who curated the Edinburgh retrospective. In a sense, then, the exhibition is about the photographer and not about the subjects of his photographs. In fact, very little information is given about each photograph, and the exhibition guide is an extended biography rather than elaboration on the images displayed.

Cartier-Bresson was a self-trained and self-disciplined photographer. Always careful of not being wasteful with shots, he still managed to produce a great number of masterpieces. In a sense, the simplicity of photographic technology during Cartier-Bresson's career necessitated and aided such an approach - today's digital photography takes away from some of the 'magic' of darkroom development as well as from the discipline necessary for getting the 'perfect shot'. Still, even before the availability of digital technology, Cartier-Bresson warned against the temptation to photograph everything from every angle in order to safeguard a satisfactory photograph by the end of a shoot or an assignment. Selection of which material to use takes place before the picture is taken as well as afterwards when it comes to deciding which photographs to include in a report or an exhibition. As Cartier-Bresson himself put it:

    'Things-As-They-Are offer such an abundance of material that a photographer must guard against the temptation of trying to do everything. It is essential to cut from the raw material of life - to cut and cut, but to cut with discrimination. While working, a photographer must reach a precise awareness of what he is trying to do.' ('The Decisive Moment', 1952 in The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers, 1999)

Cartier-Bresson's career was prolific; by the 1950s he had already captured seminal events of twentieth century history, including the liberation of Paris, Mao's takeover of Beijing, the Spanish civil war and the funeral of Mahatma Ghandi. He had also assisted Jean Renoir on two films, directed his own documentaries, been imprisoned by the Germans between 1940 - 1943 (he escaped at his third attempt), photographed famous writers and artists, and co-founded Magnum Photos. But he did not declare his photographic career complete until the mid-70s, when he decided to devote himself chiefly to drawing and painting. By then he had also reported on Balinese theatre, he had been the first Western photographer allowed into the USSR during the period of the détente, and had travelled further in China, Mexico, Cuba, Japan, India and around Europe.

In 1952, even after having witnessed disparate events, countries, landscapes and peoples, Cartier-Bresson observed that 'one fascinating thing about portraits is the way they enable us to trace the sameness of man'. The acknowledgement that individuals have their 'habitats' does not preclude that 'man's continuity somehow comes through all the external things that constitute him' and Cartier-Bresson maintained a confidence that the photographer can achieve 'a true reflection of a person's world' ('The Decisive Moment').

This confidence in the act of photography seems idealistic, even naïve, in light of cumulative criticisms that have rendered the observation that 'photography does not merely reproduce reality' commonsensical rather than revelatory. Nowadays, it does not require great sophistication to be aware that photography creates its own reality, that it reflects the attitude of the photographer, that the object or subject photographed can, to different degrees, be manipulated through technology etc. Hence, the conviction in Cartier-Bresson's assertion is striking because it alludes to, and reminds us of, an optimistic and humanistic ideal; the possibility to bring out and convey truth and commonality through an artistic medium.

So was Cartier-Bresson a humanist? His widow Martine Franck, herself an acclaimed photographer, said, at the opening of the Edinburgh retrospective, that: 'people can identify with the people he photographs. He had a real love of people, he hated to be called a 'humanistic photographer'. His work is about a profound understanding of people.'

This implies that Cartier-Bresson's work is a case of 'understanding for the sake of understanding' and then 'spreading the word'. This is certainly suggestive of the kind of moralistic zeal amongst photographers that Sontag harshly exposed in her 1977 work On Photography. It suggests that Cartier-Bresson's project is an altruistic one, but without pretensions of having transformative potential. He was a photojournalist who worked on assignments (though artistry was clearly not absent from his work), but without political intention. As one of his quotes included in the Dean Gallery exhibition states: 'I have no message to deliver and nothing to prove: I see and I feel - only the eye, in its surprise, can decide.' Indeed, Gérard Macé, in his short 1996 essay 'The Lightest Baggage', describes Cartier-Bresson as a 'Buddhist in flux' (Introduction to Cartier-Bresson's The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers, 1999). Twenty years earlier, Cartier-Bresson had described Buddhism as 'neither a religion nor a philosophy, but a medium that consists in controlling the spirit in order to attain harmony, and, through compassion, to offer it to others'. (The Mind's Eye)

Can we then draw the conclusion that Cartier-Bresson was first and foremost an artist without worldly aims or aspirations? Peter Stepan describes him as 'the Raphael of twentieth-century photographers', an 'aesthete' whose art 'became an expression of high cultural taste' (Icons of Photography: The 20th Century, 2005). But Cartier-Bresson did make a distinction between photography, which he saw as a gut reaction, an immediate and spontaneous action, and drawing, which he described as a meditation, through which such instantaneous comprehension is elaborated. And it was for drawing that he more or less abandoned photography. At the same time, 'taking photographs is a way of understanding which is inseparable from other means of visual expression. It is a way of life.' (Quoted in the Edinburgh exhibition)

If photographing is a way of understanding reality, others and oneself, it cannot be taken merely as a device through which reality is recorded. Instead, it must be revelatory. If photography is indeed a 'joint operation of the brain, the eye, and the heart', as Cartier-Bresson put it in 'The Decisive Moment', it cannot merely be a product of spontaneity. If it requires awareness, patience and skill, it cannot merely involve immediacy of action. It seems as if Cartier-Bresson was fascinated by the act of photography, but not the crafts or techniques surrounding it, by what the photograph can record and lay bare, but not in what it can prove. In his own words: 'My passion has never been for photography 'in-itself', but for the possibility - through forgetting yourself - of recording in a fraction of a second the emotion of the subject, and the beauty of the form; that is, a geometry awakened by what's offered'. (The Mind's Eye)

Cartier-Bresson's work was not self-reflexive - it was not a case of a photographer reflecting on photography after having abandoned reality-out-there. However, though he managed to get 'close without being seen' and indiscreetly catch his subjects in intimate moments (for example, Picasso is shown shirtless and buckling his belt next to an unmade bed) and even capture something essential about their personalities (Giacometti amongst his sculptures, looking like one of them), many of his photos also clearly acknowledge the photographer's presence; they are sometimes slightly out of focus and in most pictures of crowds, some people look straight into the camera. In a 1999 photograph from Provence, we even see the photographer's shadow. Also, instead of cropping his photographs after printing them, Cartier-Bresson often left the edge of the negative visible. All of this reminds us that the piece of reality we are watching has been processed.

Cartier-Bresson warned against artificiality and, as the exhibition guide tells us, he did not add special effects in the darkroom, nor did he retouch. He also took great pride in not using fancy equipment, sticking instead to his beloved Leica and preferring the standard 50mm lens, rarely using wide-angle or telephoto lenses. Furthermore, he never staged photographs or told his subjects how to pose. He thought that in portraits, the photographer should search for the identity of the sitter.

Cartier-Bresson's portraits are compassionate and his photographs are not exploitative, aggressive or overtly intrusive. There is no comparison, for example, between him and the photographer in Antonioni's 1966 film Blowup, who, in a famous scene, hovers over the model Verushka's body while clicking away on his camera, shouting out instructions on how she should pose, before he, exhausted, slumps down on a sofa and leaves the model lying on the floor. Instead, Cartier-Bresson's ambition is to feel involved in what he frames through his viewfinder in order to '"give a meaning" to the world' and this attitude 'requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry…One must always take photographs with the greatest respect for the subject and for oneself' (The Mind's Eye).

The distance and distinctive positions that the camera creates between photographer and photographed means the act of photography is an act of positioning the self in relation to the world. It is too simplistic to say that it is either purely benevolent or purely predatory. The photographer in Blowup may be predatory, exploiting and manipulating, but the camera, unavoidably, keeps him at a safe distance from the model. And Cartier-Bresson may be a compassionate photographer, but he nevertheless is in control of what, who and how to capture with his camera. Ultimately, he deems situations and peoples as picturesque, browsing streets and faces in search for, or at least attentive to, meaningful events and decisive moments. He, himself, admits that there is a flâneur side to the photographer (Europeans, 1955) In On Photography, Sontag describes the probing flâneur photographer and his joy of watching:

    Gazing on other people's reality with curiosity, with detachment, with professionalism, the ubiquitous photographer operates as if that activity transcends class interest, as if its perspective is universal. In fact, photography first comes into its own as an extension of the eye of the middle class flâneur, whose sensibility was so accurately charted by Baudelaire. The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitring, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes.

As the photographer captures and records moments, he also interprets the world and imposes a commentary and narrative upon it. Since photographers have been relatively undiscriminating in what they have deemed interesting, it follows that their photographical commentaries have saturated the world with images that at once familiarise and exoticise, demystify and puzzle. That which is distant in time and place, can be preserved and even possessed through photographs. Sontag, who described herself as obsessed with photography, wrote:

    Whatever the moral claims made on behalf of photography, its main effect is to convert the world into a department store or museum-without-walls in which every subject is depreciated into an article of consumption, promoted into an item for aesthetic appreciation. Through the camera people become customers or tourists of reality…for reality is understood as plural, fascinating, and up for grabs. Bringing the exotic near, rendering the familiar and homely exotic, photographs make the entire world available as an object of appraisal. For photographers who are not confined to projecting their own obsessions, there are arresting moments, beautiful subjects everywhere. The most heterogeneous subjects are then brought together in the fictive unity offered by the ideology of humanism.

The quality of being interesting is empty in itself and so it is up to the photographer to render his subjects such. In this sense, everything can be made interesting through the camera and the democratisation of experience can only be an acknowledgement of the cliché that there is beauty in everything. This 'fictive unity', according to which all people are worth photographing merely because of their humanity, is ultimately reductive. According to Sontag, this pitfall is not only present in the kind of artistic or aesthetic photography that is interested in beautiful forms. To the contrary, documentary or reportorial photography such as that of Cartier-Bresson, does not escape the reductiveness of homology. Instead such photography transforms reality into a tautology. 'When Cartier-Bresson goes to China', Sontag writes, 'he shows that there are people in China, and that they are Chinese'.

Yet a cynical view that purports that everything has been done, that nothing is new in an image-saturated world, quickly becomes dispelled when browsing the 200 images that are displayed in the Edinburgh Cartier-Bresson retrospective. Not merely because they are windows to a past or to places, people and objects the viewer may not have been in personal contact with, but because they give the sense that Cartier-Bresson, with his precise sense for composition, timing and detail, could see what others would overlook.

http://www_culturewars_org_uk/2005-01/cartierbresson.htm

[bellphoto 编辑于 2008-03-03 07:37]

(Page 5 of 5)

Critics have sometimes complained about the intrusiveness of photojournalists like Mr. Cartier-Bresson. John Malcolm Brinnin, who traveled across the United States with him in 1946, later called him "a humanitarian indifferent to people."

Mr. Cartier-Bresson heard this criticism and replied: "There is something appalling about photographing people. It is certainly some sort of violation; so if sensitivity is lacking, there can be something barbaric about it."

In 1966 he quit Magnum. Efstratios Tériade, the great French publisher and art impresario, asked him if he hadn't perhaps said all he had to say as a photographer. "It was true," Mr. Cartier-Bresson said. "But that just made me itch to do more. I hung on two years too long at Magnum."

He had always carried a little sketch pad with him, consistent with his early training as a painter under Lhote. Drawing had been his first passion. So with help from artist friends like Sam Szafran and Avigdor Arikha in Paris, he committed himself to drawing with an enthusiasm that people around him found remarkable. It was a sometimes difficult transition, he said. He still took photographs, but now only occasionally and on the sly.

His drawings of figures and landscapes and his copies of other art owed a big debt to Giacometti, another old friend. He often described drawing as a meditative activity, photography as intuitive, but added that "there is no esthetic peculiar to photography or drawing." He said that few people would care about his drawings if he weren't a famous photographer. One of his remarks, that photography is "a marvelous profession while it remains a modest one," helps to explain his skepticism toward his own drawings. He took pride in them, but like photographs or people, they were admirable to the degree that they remained humble.

Into his last years, he spent days drawing at his studio near the Place des Victoires or in the Louvre or in his apartment overlooking the Tuileries, from which he could see the panoramic view that Monet and Pissarro had painted a century earlier.

Last year, a few months before his 95th birthday and coinciding with a retrospective of his work at the French National Library, he and his wife and daughter established the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, the first private foundation dedicated to photography in France. He continued to insist, as he had done for much of his later life, that he no longer wanted to talk about photography. "It's like when you're divorced, and people keep asking you about your former wife," Mr. Cartier-Bresson said. "There's something indecent about it." Still, he couldn't help talking about it. Similarly, he said that he didn't grant interviews ("they're like police interrogations," was a phrase of his), though he did grant them, coyly telling all interviewers that they were merely having a friendly conversation and requesting that any tape recorder be stashed away. Then some bon mot would pop into his head and, pleased with himself, he would look at the machine, eyebrows raised, as if to say, "So?"

A few years ago, Mr. Cartier-Bresson went to the Pompidou Center in Paris to sketch a Matisse portrait. Balanced on his favorite shooting stick, nose buried in his drawing, he paid no attention to the tourists who snapped his picture and videotaped him; they seemed unaware of who he was but charmed simply by the sight of an old man sketching.

When he got up to leave, he noticed a couple sitting side by side on a bench, a child resting on the man's shoulder. "A perfect composition if you cut out the woman," Mr. Cartier-Bresson said, and made a brisk, chopping gesture toward her. The woman looked baffled. "Why didn't I bring my camera?" he asked. Then he clicked an imaginary shutter and left.

The obituary of the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson on Thursday misstated the name shown on a poster in the photographer's famous 1932 photo of a puddle jumper near the St.-Lazare railway station. Partly obscured in a visual pun by the photographer, the name was that of the pianist Alexander Brailowsky — not Railowsky.

http://www_nytimes_com/2004/08/04/ar...&ex=1204606800

(Page 3 of 5)

But his first love was drawing and painting. Mr. Cartier-Bresson's uncle ("my mythical father," he called him) had been a painter; he was killed in World War I. His father also drew, as a pastime, and Mr. Cartier-Bresson to the end of his life preserved at home some of his father's drawings, along with some by a great-grandfather, which he showed proudly to anyone who asked about them.

He remembered seeing Seurat's painting of nude models in a gallery window: "That made its impact on me. I was 15. Before that I'd been a Boy Scout. The totem name they gave me was 'quivering eel' because I was always slipping off somewhere." He went, among other places, to drink mint liqueurs in a brothel on the Rue des Moulins, where Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec had gone to draw. And he also went to the Café Cyrano, in the Place Blanche, to sit at the Surrealists' table while André Breton held forth. "The trouble was, I never got close enough to the center of the table," he joked, "so I missed a lot of what Breton was saying."

In fact, Surrealism greatly affected him; among other things, it gave him a respect for free, iconoclastic expression.

In 1927 Mr. Cartier-Bresson began to study painting with André Lhote, an early exponent of Cubism and an admired pedagogue. Mr. Cartier-Bresson would always credit Lhote with teaching him "everything I know about photography." Lhote sought to link the French classical tradition of Poussin and David to Modernism. Many people have pondered the split between Mr. Cartier-Bresson's photographs, with their instantaneity, and his later drawings, with their hesitant, even painstaking lines. The link between them involved a belief in strict discipline and order, traceable to Lhote.

Next he studied English literature and art at Cambridge University, then in 1930 was inducted into the French Army. He was stationed at Le Bourget, near Paris. "And I had quite a hard time of it, too," he remembered, "because I was toting Joyce under my arm and a Lebel rifle on my shoulder."

As a young man steeped in Rimbaud and looking for adventure, he wanted to see more of the world. Once out of the Army, he headed for Africa to hunt boar and antelope. The metaphor of shooting naturally became a familiar one in writings about his photography. Mr. Cartier-Bresson used it often himself: "approach tenderly, gently on tiptoe - even if the subject is a still life," he said. "A velvet hand, a hawk's eye - these we should all have."

He also said: "I adore shooting photographs. It's like being a hunter. But some hunters are vegetarians - which is my relationship to photography." And later, explaining his dislike of the automatic camera, he said: "it's like shooting partridges with a machine gun."

With a Brownie that he had received as a gift, he began to snap photographs in Africa, but they ended up ruined. Having contracted blackwater fever, he nearly died. The way he told the story, a witch doctor got him out of a coma. While still feverish, he wrote a postcard to his grandfather, asking that he be buried in Normandy, at the edge of the Eawy forest, with Debussy's String Quartet to be played at the funeral. An uncle wrote back: "Your grandfather finds all that too expensive. It would be preferable that you return first."

Recuperating in Marseilles in 1931, he acquired his first Leica. "I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to 'trap' life - to preserve life in the act of living," he recalled. "Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was unrolling before my eyes."

The photographs that Mr. Cartier-Bresson took during the next decade, although related to ones by Atget, Lartigue, Munkacsi, Kertesz and, in their mystery, to paintings by de Chirico, were groundbreaking. He began to travel and exhibit widely in these years. He had his first show in Madrid in 1933; then another in 1934 in Mexico City, jointly with Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and yet another in 1935 at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York City.

再转载一遍这篇文章，与各位共享。写得十分精彩！

Cartier-Bresson's Decisive Moment
December 2004

by David Friend


Of all the masters of the camera who passed away this year, none was as influential or renowned as Henri Cartier-Bresson, among the towering figures of 20th-century photography. As we look back on the milestones of 2004, it seems fitting to pay homage to H.C.B., who died in August at age 95. Below, we reprise an article written for Vanity Fair by the magazine's editor of creative development, David Friend, a frequent contributor to The Digital Journalist. The piece, published in March of 2003, was the first major profile that Cartier-Bresson had granted in years. The occasion: the opening of the photographer's foundation in Paris.
Copyright

《The Mind’s Eye》
8

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《The Mind’s Eye》

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《The Mind’s Eye》

推荐一个电子书籍

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向布列松致敬特辑

http://emagazine_dpnet_com_cn/EmagaZine/0610/

欢迎各位共同来丰富这个向布勒松大师学习的学习笔记。^_^  多谢！

用相片，记录决定性的瞬间；
用相片，讲述老百姓的故事；
用相片，诠释※※※的定义；
用相片，教诲迷邪染的朋友；
用相片，达至觉正净的境界。

推荐一段大师的采访。

http://www.※※※※※※※.com/watch?v=UHXVGEeNzsQ

引：一位网友的评论。
Why Cartier-Bresson consented to this interview is beyond me. He never gave interviews and seldom made comments
about his work. Charlie Rose means well, but is not in the
least informed about art and artists. Avedon, being an
artist himself, is given to emotional statements. To make
insulting remarks about him is just silly and insensitive.
In the larger world of art, Cartier-Bresson certainly stands
at the top. There is not a photographer alive who does
not admire him or learned from him.

再次感谢“珠海老许”的详尽、精彩的论述。您也是第一位，学生在论坛中遇到的对布勒松如此感兴趣的第一位老师。十分感谢。

  从您的论述中，学习到很多东西。对布勒松作品的欣赏，各人都有不同的角度，对摄影的理解，也是因人而异。从布勒松的作品中，不能发现大师对事物本质的深刻发掘和诙谐幽默。除了布勒松大师一位，有一个M.I.L.K.的公司，其官方网站是www_milkphotos_com。也正是受到其影响，对布勒松的作品更加欣赏。拜读了大师的这段话---"Shooting a picture is recognizing an event," he later explained, "and at the very instant and within a fraction of a second rigorously organizing the forms you see to express and give meaning to that event. It is a matter of putting your brain, your eye and your heart in the same line of sight. It is a way of life."
（http://www_electricedge_com/greymatter/archives/archive-05252003-05312003.htm）---对大师更是由衷的崇敬。

   在图书馆里，只找到过《The Mind’Eye》。对于大师的作品大部分都是在网上和影片中欣赏到的。在ebay上，刚刚买到一本《The man,the image & the world》，十分高兴。也许，这是学生能买的唯一一本关于大师的书。您能有大师这么多画册，十分难道。正如您所说，价格确实不低。以后希望能在图书馆借到更多。您提到的大师的废片集，从来没有看过，不知道书名是什么？还请指教一下。多谢。

  在网上，看到有人推荐大师的《The artless art》这本书，目前还没机会拜读过。推荐感兴趣的朋友不妨一读。

  再次感谢“珠海老许”的精彩的论述。

[2008-03-02 20:07 补充如下]

更正：不能发现大师对事物本质的深刻发掘和诙谐幽默。中的“不能”，应该是“不难”。^_^

手头有本厚厚的<<布列松废片集>> (1932-1946),很多景场老布一掐就是一卷,很多也至少一条胶片(6张).

当然,即便很多人可以拍7千万张,7亿张,也未必能想老布一样出20本画册.布列松一开始拿相机,拍了不到一年就举行个人首次展览,那时他才24岁.这应该和他的美术功底有关系(当然,学美术的转摄影也海了去了,成名的也不多_

布列松1908年出生,十四岁进入中学,第二年退学,中学都没毕业.19岁开始体派画家鲁德门下学画.27岁到美国在保罗-史川德(Palu Strand,同样是非常著名的摄影大师)手下学习电影.次年回法国当电影助导.

1979年ICP(国际摄影中心)为布列松在美国举行了长达三年之久的15个城市的巡回展,展出的150张作品,作品拍摄时间横跨47年,而1932年到1933年这两年就占了五份之一.这个时期是布列松的高峰,尽管如此,纵观这个时期一些题材和重要的事件的表现上,很多摄影大师,包括布列松的马格南同事的作品一点也不输给布列松,甚至在其之上.他们在西方摄影界的名气丝毫不让布列松,只不过在中国,似乎老布就是"神".比如题头所言:



事实上,无论西班牙※※也好,二战也好,老布的好友兼同事,卡帕的作品是远在老布之上的.而且也不奇怪,毕竟卡帕是战地记者而布列松不是,虽然他们同是马格南的同事.

不服气的,拿片子说话! 西班牙※※和二战的片子,你拿出布列松的10张,我就拿出卡帕的10张,你拿出100张,我就拿出100张.

至于在中国,看看卡帕在台儿庄,在徐州前线,在郑州,在武汉,在西安的片子再出来说话吧.

而至于表现那个时代的巴黎,那个时代的欧洲,其他大师的经典作品就太多太多了.其中包括被布列松尊称为老师的他的前辈大师安德列-柯特兹(Andre Kertsz).楼主介绍的第13贴布列松1930年拍摄<<布鲁塞尔>>,简直就是柯特兹1920年拍摄的<<布达佩斯>>的翻版(类似的还有很多很多).以至于布兰-柯依(Brian Coe)在他的<<摄影大师的技巧>>中这样说布列松:

”三十年代早期,他看柯特兹怎样做,就照着模样做,一下子就跃身为法国最伟大的摄影家”.

话虽偏激了点,至少说明,布列松的确是个伟大的摄影大师,但不能忽略同时期那些同样伟大的摄影大师.还有布列松脚下的那些大师的肩膀,题头【作者】谭伯登文中什么"无人可及"啊,他的眼光才是最卓越的之类的花语,我觉得不但没有拔高布列松,反而起到了负面效果.

   多谢“珠海老许”的文章。没太看懂。

   推荐各位可以参考一下“The impassioned eye"这部关于布勒松大师的片子，很有价值。在www.※※※※※※※.com上可以搜索到。

   再转载一次下面的这段论述。感觉十分精彩。

（转）

至于一些人对卡蒂埃-布勒松的“决定性瞬间”的误解，可能也影响着对于卡蒂埃-布勒松的评价。所谓的抓住“决定性瞬间”，我们不能狭隘、肤浅地将之理解为 “抓住被摄对象最有趣的那个瞬间”。这样的理解，势必会得出这样的结论：卡蒂埃-布勒松只不过是个抓拍大师而已，其创作缺乏深入的思考，其作品只具有很强的趣味性。事实上卡蒂埃-布勒松的“决定性瞬间”指的是：任何发展运动着的事物都有着其外在形态与内在本质最为接近的那一时刻，这是最为真实的一刻，它具有总结了一切和永恒的意义，它暗示着过去、现在及未来的一切。而这一时刻，就是所谓的“决定性瞬间”。由此可见，摄影师若想抓住这个“决定性瞬间”，绝不只是个抓拍技巧的问题。其关键首先在于，摄影师能否挖掘出事物的本质意义，然后才是能否发现最能真实反映本质的那一瞬间，最后才是能否利用相机抓住这一瞬间。这其中，能否挖掘出事物的本质意义，靠的是观察、思考，是一个人的综合文化修养；而能否意识到“决定性瞬间”，靠的是直觉的敏感，是较强的造型能力。至于最终能否抓住这一瞬间，才是个拍摄技巧问题。就此，卡蒂埃-布勒松在他的《决定性瞬间》中写到：“摄影，是在一刹那之间同时对两个方面的认知：一方面是认知有关事件的意义；一方面是认知能适当去表达这个事件的精确构成。”卡蒂埃-布勒松也很讨厌别人将“决定性瞬间”解释为一种技巧，并争辩说，它不是一招把戏，也不是一件工具，它是一种“观世之道”。与深厚的综合修养和敏锐的洞察力相比，抓拍技巧并不是“决定性瞬间”价值的核心，也不是卡蒂埃-布勒松大师地位的支点。至于说：“卡蒂埃-布勒松注重的是瞬间思维，而不是深刻思考。”还可能包含着另外的误解。因为即使是端着相机捕捉“决定性瞬间”的时刻，也很难说是“瞬间思维”在起作用。如果说此时是“以平时深刻思考为基础的艺术直觉”在发挥着主要作用，可能会更确切些。
http://laotingcn_com/bbs/simple/index.php?t23084.html

（转）
街头摄影观念与技巧(上)
编者按：
街头速写并不像一般人想象的那样简单，要拍好该类照片很不容易。

　由街头摄影的观念及技巧上来看街头速写（其实也正是纪实摄影的观念及技巧），它并不如一般人印象中那样“好拍得不得了，街头照片不过就是随便拍拍而已。”只要接触过街头速写得朋友都知道，要在不安排、不造假地情况下完成一张完整的作品是很不容易的，甚至有人在试过后曾灰心地说街头速写的“成功率”好低。没错！街头速写的“成功率”是比其它风格的摄影作品低，但它具有其独特的“价值”。写实的题材往往比风花雪月的东西更有流传的意义。街头速写在拍摄过程中带给我们的乐趣和成就感，也一点不比其它类型的摄影来得低。

自然化的街头速写

　　就拍摄题材观察，街头速写的作品不是“碰到的”就是“等来的”。以“自然化”为经，“决定性瞬间”为纬，该是街头速写的最佳诠释。自然化就是真，拒绝人为的安排，不为画意派的形式所限制。一般来说，写实注意摄影大都有一下几点要素：

1> 自然的接触与取景。

2> 自然的光源。只要不是拍摄者所打的光，原场景是什么光就是自然光。

3> 自然的场景与环境描写。

4> 自然的人物表情，动作与造型。

5> 自然的创作****与技巧。

何谓决定性瞬间

　　“内涵”是街头摄影的本质，“构图”是其形式包装，内涵与形式的融合就是决定性瞬间。布列松强调的决定性瞬间，是指形式与内涵的融合达到情绪最高亢的那一瞬间。（虽然街头摄影的风格不止这么一种，但决定性瞬间仍然是街头摄影的主流。）

街头速写的构图观

　　那么街头摄影该如何构图呢？现代写实照片的构图必须与内涵相结合，我们不要求如画意派那么整洁，乱一点没有关系，只要那乱能够帮助主题说出故事，那就没问题。这可能就是摄影与绘画最大的不同点。摄影有两种特性，纪实性与即时性。若我们拍摄时仍抱着模仿传统绘画风格的构图及想法，而放弃摄影特色的话，那还不如去画画更直接。

街头摄影的拍摄主体

　　前面说过街头摄影的照片不是碰到的就是等来的，以自然化为经、决定性瞬间为纬，所以街头摄影作品显然是由“突发的”及“可遇见”的两种状况所构成，所以我们可以运用抓拍（snapshot），偷拍，预想（pre-vision）及等待技巧来完成作品（“沟通”也是一项很重要的技巧，但并不适用于街头的即时拍摄反而是对报道摄影非常重要）。

街头摄影主要就是拍摄“人”这个动态主体，我们有两种方法：

1> 主动接近主体，以主体为主题来构图（抢拍及偷拍）。

2> 先构图，再等待主体走入我们为它预留的位置（预想及等待）。

所以我将街头摄影题材的来源分成三种：

1> 我们像打猎般的主动出击。

2> 运气好碰到了。

3> 等来的。

　　虽说街头摄影不是碰到就是等来的，但其实不像想象中的简单，这需要更高的拍摄技巧及个人修为，对器材的掌握也需极为熟悉才办得到。某街头摄影大师曾谦虚的说它的作品是“上帝的礼物”，但是他的成功并非偶然，如果技巧不够，自身涵养不足，就算是快门机会来了，也还是一筹莫展。

AF的限制

　　我们面对“快门机会”要如何快速的取景构图？其实，我们要做的就是将人这个主体化为主题，这个有赖于个人修为。这里仅就相机的操作技巧论述“再快的自动对焦，也比不过免对焦，再快的自动测光，也比不过免测光。”

　　就现有的器材来看，这句话对于街头摄影绝对是至理名言，就像“暗部系于曝光，亮部系于显影”之于黑白摄影一样重要。电子相机快是已经很快了，但是真正需要的时候，它却还是不够快。怎么说呢？以佳能而言，佳能的相机焦点真是多，佳能弄这么多焦点出来还不是为了用家不被少数几个对焦点限制了构图，希望能够做到处处都是对焦点，让用家能够构图更灵活、对焦更迅速。他们的目标是希望能够达到处处对焦点的免对焦点的境界，弄半天，他们也只是朝着免对焦点的方向在努力。但经验够的用家都明白，自动对焦点要走到处处对焦点的免对焦点的境界还来日方长。自动对焦的动作方式是先选择对焦点，再锁定被摄体后才能释放快门。这两个动作对街头速写来说是浪费时间，况且，自动对焦对突然由旁边切进的物体仍然无法反应迅速。再者，偷拍（不看取景窗构图）更是AF的死穴，我们不看取景窗拍摄要如何选择对焦点？这几个原因都将使自动对焦相机错过不少的快门机会。“难不成机械相机在街头速写上的操作速度会比自动相机快？”，没错，只要了解景深观念，机械相机的操作速度比自动相机迅速多了。

http://www_dpnet_com_cn/html_school/...0818_1768.html

转）
街头摄影观念与技巧(下)

景深的观念

　　说到“免对焦”，就必须先有“景深”的概念。虽然镜头一次只能清晰对焦于一个特定物距，在那个物距前后都不可能呈现清晰的影像，但是人眼的“解像力” 有限，我们并无法分辨一个极小的点或圆，这个极限就是“允许模糊圈”。所谓的“景深”就是指在这一个锐利对焦的物距前后的一段可以被接受的清晰成像范围。景深范围的变化是有规律的。镜头焦距越短，景深越深；物距（对焦距离）越长，景深越深；使用光圈越小，景深越深。基于这个原因，50mm以下的镜头就成为街头速写的最爱。广角镜头的感染力与良好的环境说明力，也是广角镜头受到街头重用的原因。

免对焦

　　如何做到免对焦呢？首先就是不要想对焦，利用镜头上的景深尺标设定一段景深范围拍摄或以超焦距离拍摄。否则我们使用机械相机却老想着对焦，动作绝对会比自动相机慢。所谓的“免对焦”正是景深观念运用的极致，这里不提繁复的景深计算式，只谈景深标尺的运用。

　　在机械相机的镜头上有三排数字，以 Leica M 35mm / f2 为例，最前面的光圈调整环就不多解释了；中间的是对焦环，上面的数字是物距（对焦距离）；最底下那排即是景深尺标，景深尺标上的数字是左右对称的，上面的标线对应的物距（对焦环）正是使用光圈的景深范围。

　　要使用“超焦距”，只要将∞ 对到景深尺标上我们所使用的光圈数字上就是了。假使我们使用的光圈是F8，您只要将∞ 的中心对在“8”的景深尺标上，就可以超焦距拍摄。此时超焦距就是※※对应的5m处，意即2.5m一直到∞ 都在景深范围内。换句话说，在这段景深范围内都免对焦。

　　使用35mm的镜头时，许多时候2.5m开始的清晰范围对于snapshot而言是不够用的，此时我们要善用景深表以获得较贴近被摄主题的景深范围，仍以M 35mm / f2举例如下：

　　转动对焦环，将距离上的数字（没数字也没关系）对在∣标记上，此时景深尺标（两边）数字所对应的距离就是景深范围。如我们将对焦距离设在3m处，使用光圈为F8，此时景深范围约在1.6m-9m间，在这个范围内您都免对焦，很方便。我们只要拨弄镜头上的光圈环、对焦环再配合景深尺标，就可显示出使用光圈、物距与景深变化的关系，轻松的做到“免对焦”。

免测光与AE的限制

　　一般刚接触到摄影的朋友比较无法理解所谓“再快的自动测光也比不上免测光”这句话的含义，那时因为这些朋友被手上的自动相机繁杂没有必要的数字给搞糊涂了（电子相机不这么做看起来就不专业了，人本人挺懂得营销的）。事实上我们需要这么精密的“刻度”吗？我们需要一些说不大清楚的测光模式吗？不需要，只要你试过就知道不需要。况且环境并不是一成不变的，或许有一天测光表能做到会思考，但决不是现在，所以我们还是应该保持清醒，不要忘记测光表只是提供数据而已，最后的判断还是留给我们自己做比较恰当。

　　言归正传，“免测光”还是得先测光的（如果对晴空曝光法有信心的话可免了），我们可先在环境中找个中间调的物体：如树叶、草地、不反光的灰墙等等先测光，若拍摄环境中找不到中间调得物体时，我们可以自己的手掌测光后，再加一级曝光量就可以开始抢拍了。当然，环境并非一成不变的，有光影还有不同的光源。听起来很复杂，但实际上没想象中的难，更何况黑白负片的大宽容度，想失误还真不容易。试试拿着机械相机四处测光看看，你会发觉很多场景都有类似的曝光值，拍了一阵子对曝光也会有一点概念。怎样的光影会差几级？该做何种曝光判断？慢慢的就会成为反射动作了，就算是遇到复杂的光线条件也几乎可以判断得比测光表准确恰当，这就是为何机械相机会使人聪明的缘故。自动相机就不容易帮助我们进化，当我们在迅速操作自动相机的时候，取景器上的数字是无法帮助我们迅速判断光影差异的。自动相机光圈快门的数字组合太多了，有时光圈快门数字的花哨变化，事实上只是相同曝光量的不同组合罢了，更何况反射式测光表测的是反射光，面对不同反射率的物体它仍是一筹莫展，就连Nikon F5的3D RGB也无法标准判断所有环境的曝光值，而且还要因主体的位置改变测光点，否则很难得到适当的曝光。因为测光是由相机在测，而不是人在测，这些都拖慢了曝光的速度。

　　上面的文字几乎都是在说“再快的自动对焦也比不过免对焦；再快的自动测光也比不过免测光”，感觉起来好像少了些东西，是什么东西呢？就是“人”这个主体，人是有感觉的动物，我们拍摄“人”这个主体时必须与他一同感觉，如果我们只注重技术养成的话，是无法将人这个“主体”化为“主题”的。我们应该由尊重被摄者做起，不能因为要完成自己的小作而去干扰到别人的生活，如果我们的技术无法让我们不干扰被摄者的话，我情愿不拍，拍不到的更美，不是吗？如果我们能够尊重被摄者，自然就能与他一同感受而拍出不一样的东西。

编辑：October

http://www_dpnet_com_cn/html_school/...0819_1769.html

   这副拍得有深意。

---街边得老太、残缺的※※※像。带给人们思考多多。

是“决定性瞬间”的范例。学习。

（转）

至于一些人对卡蒂埃-布勒松的“决定性瞬间”的误解，可能也影响着对于卡蒂埃-布勒松的评价。所谓的抓住“决定性瞬间”，我们不能狭隘、肤浅地将之理解为 “抓住被摄对象最有趣的那个瞬间”。这样的理解，势必会得出这样的结论：卡蒂埃-布勒松只不过是个抓拍大师而已，其创作缺乏深入的思考，其作品只具有很强的趣味性。事实上卡蒂埃-布勒松的“决定性瞬间”指的是：任何发展运动着的事物都有着其外在形态与内在本质最为接近的那一时刻，这是最为真实的一刻，它具有总结了一切和永恒的意义，它暗示着过去、现在及未来的一切。而这一时刻，就是所谓的“决定性瞬间”。由此可见，摄影师若想抓住这个“决定性瞬间”，绝不只是个抓拍技巧的问题。其关键首先在于，摄影师能否挖掘出事物的本质意义，然后才是能否发现最能真实反映本质的那一瞬间，最后才是能否利用相机抓住这一瞬间。这其中，能否挖掘出事物的本质意义，靠的是观察、思考，是一个人的综合文化修养；而能否意识到“决定性瞬间”，靠的是直觉的敏感，是较强的造型能力。至于最终能否抓住这一瞬间，才是个拍摄技巧问题。就此，卡蒂埃-布勒松在他的《决定性瞬间》中写到：“摄影，是在一刹那之间同时对两个方面的认知：一方面是认知有关事件的意义；一方面是认知能适当去表达这个事件的精确构成。”卡蒂埃-布勒松也很讨厌别人将“决定性瞬间”解释为一种技巧，并争辩说，它不是一招把戏，也不是一件工具，它是一种“观世之道”。与深厚的综合修养和敏锐的洞察力相比，抓拍技巧并不是“决定性瞬间”价值的核心，也不是卡蒂埃-布勒松大师地位的支点。至于说：“卡蒂埃-布勒松注重的是瞬间思维，而不是深刻思考。”还可能包含着另外的误解。因为即使是端着相机捕捉“决定性瞬间”的时刻，也很难说是“瞬间思维”在起作用。如果说此时是“以平时深刻思考为基础的艺术直觉”在发挥着主要作用，可能会更确切些。

http://laotingcn_com/bbs/simple/index.php?t23084.html