【50摄影大师介绍】之十一,亨利·卡蒂埃－布列松 Henri Cartier-Bresson

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【50摄影大师介绍】之十一,亨利·卡蒂埃－布列松 Henri Cartier-Bresson简介

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50 Masters of Photography (11) --- Henri Cartier-Bresson

(born August 22, 1908, Chanteloup, France—died August 3, 2004, Céreste) French photographer whose humane, spontaneous photographs helped establish photojournalism as an art form. His theory that photography can capture the meaning beneath outward appearance in instants of extraordinary clarity is perhaps best expressed in his book Images à la sauvette (1952; The Decisive Moment).

Cartier-Bresson was born and attended school in a village not far from Paris. In 1927–28 he studied in Paris with André Lhote, an artist and critic associated with the Cubist movement. Lhote implanted in him a lifelong interest in painting, a crucial factor in the education of his vision. In 1929 Cartier-Bresson went to the University of Cambridge, where he studied literature and painting.

As a boy, Cartier-Bresson had been initiated into the mysteries of the simple "Brownie" snapshot camera. But his first serious concern with the medium occurred about 1930, after seeing the work of two major 20th-century photographers, Eugène Atget and Man Ray. Making use of a small allowance, he traveled in Africa in 1931, where he lived in the bush, recording his experiences with a miniature camera. There he contracted blackwater fever, necessitating his return to France. The portability of a small camera and the ease with which one could record instantaneous impressions must have struck a sympathetic chord, for in 1933 he purchased his first 35-mm Leica. The use of this type of camera was particularly relevant to Cartier-Bresson. It lent itself not only to spontaneity but to anonymity as well. So much did Cartier-Bresson wish to remain a silent, and even unseen, witness, that he covered the bright chromium parts of his camera with black tape to render it less visible, and he sometimes hid the camera under a handkerchief. The man was similarly reticent about his life and work.

In more than 40 years as a photographer, Cartier-Bresson wandered continually around the world. But there was nothing compulsive about his travels, and he explicitly expressed a desire to move slowly, to "live on proper terms" in each country, to take his time, so that he became totally immersed in the environment.

In 1937 Cartier-Bresson produced a documentary film, his first, on medical aid in the Spanish Civil War. The date also marked his first reportage photographs made for newspapers and magazines. His enthusiasm for filmmaking was further gratified when, from 1936 to 1939, he worked as an assistant to the film director Jean Renoir in the production of Une Partie de campagne ( A Day in the Country) and La Règle du jeu ( The Rules of the Game). As a photographer he felt indebted to the great films he saw as a youth. They taught him, he said, to choose precisely the expressive moment, the telling viewpoint. The importance he gave to sequential images in still photography may be attributed to his preoccupation with film.

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本期评论:

瓜哥

不同的人可能会对不同类型的摄影作品感兴趣。比如，有的人看到雄伟壮丽的风光作品，眼睛就没法挪开了。而我，当我第一眼看到布勒松1933年在内战后的西班牙，拍到的废墟上嬉戏的孩子们那张照片的时候，我的心脏停跳了半拍。你知道么？就是那种怦然心动的感觉。从那一刻起，我知道，我再也离不开纪实摄影了。

布勒松的时代是纪实摄影的黄金时代。那个时代，没有电视、没有互联网、没有twitter、更没有拍摄成本低廉的数码相机；那个时代，要想"看"到世界的另一个角落发上了什么，除了亲历以外，似乎只有千方百计地搞到一本报道那个地方的杂志周刊，然后看上面的纪实图片。

1943年，二战的法国，两次尝试失败后，布勒松终于在第三次成功地逃出了德国纳粹的集中营。两年后，他来到了美国，跟几个志同道合的朋友合伙创建了著名的图片社，玛格南。

在那个动荡的年代，布勒松以他独特的视角，记录了世界各地发生的很多事情：印度的非暴力不抵抗运动，中国的内战，冷战铁幕下的苏联。Life杂志社的Jim Burke曾作为布勒松的助手前往内战中的中国，他说：他（布勒松）跟其他僵化的美国摄影师很不同，在拍摄的时候，更像是在跳舞，或者说杂耍。

布勒松的"决定性瞬间"大家一定耳熟能详了。其实，那不是简简单单抓拍按快门那么简单。高中会考失败了几次后，新成立的Andre Lhote艺术学院接受了他入学。在那里，他开始学习绘画，尤其是几何构图。这对他后来的摄影生涯有着极其重大的影响。布勒松往往在纷繁的摄影环境里，瞬间判断出合适的拍摄站位和角度，使得背景构成近似完美的几何构成，并且把他要拍摄的主体安排在那个最突出的点上。这种拍摄的方式，才会被他的助手比喻成在杂耍。他对摄影的构图有着近乎偏执的追求，在玛格南社送交一些杂志社的图片都会坚持说明不能剪裁，甚至要求保留图片洗印后的黑边，以保证原片几何构图的完整。

谈布勒松，无法不提到徕卡。无疑的，徕卡是当时当之无愧的纪实报道摄影的利器。1952年，摄影师Philippe Halsman在跟布勒松聊了一晚之后，午夜前，他们决定去酒吧喝一杯。他看到布勒松顺手拿起了他的相机，就问："你觉得可能会拍照么？"布勒松回答："不会，但是不带着我的徕卡，我哪里也不去。"在数码摄影长枪大炮如日中天的今天，徕卡、35mm黑白胶片、全机械、手动，似乎已经过时了，仍然在用徕卡的摄影师更多的是以一种怀旧的心情。但是，徕卡所达到的那个辉煌的巅峰，似乎仍然很难被超越。

诚然，他的美术基础，他的"决定性瞬间"，他对徕卡的钟爱，事实上，使布勒松成为一代纪实摄影大师的并不是这些，而是他的"人文情怀"。他是如此地热爱人类，热爱每个普通人，他具有强烈的同情心。是的，同情心，是同情心使得他在别的摄影师都去抢着拍诸如狂欢节服饰这类很"墨西哥"的东西的时候，他转而去拍红灯区普通的接客女孩们，那是他热爱的普通的人们，他满怀同情心关怀的普通人们。

作为一个职业摄影师和一个业余画家，布勒松很少留下大段的文字。他描述自己的文字也很简洁："I am a visual man. I watch, watch, watch. I understand things through my eyes."

附：
	50 摄影大师介绍之一	安塞尔·亚当斯 Ansel Easton Adam
	50 摄影大师介绍之二	爱德华·韦斯顿 Edward Henry Weston
	50 摄影大师介绍之三三	格丽特·伯克-怀特 Margaret Bourke-White
	50 摄影大师介绍之四	盖伦.罗威尔 Galen Rowell
	50 摄影大师介绍之五	朵洛西亚·蓝吉 Dorothea Lange
	50 摄影大师介绍之六	阿尔弗雷德·斯蒂格里茨 Alfred Stieglitz
	50 摄影大师介绍之七	罗伯特·杜瓦诺 Robert Doisneau
	50 摄影大师介绍之八	黛安·阿勃斯 Diane Arbus
	50 摄影大师介绍之九	爱德华·斯泰肯 Edward Steichen
	50 摄影大师介绍之十	伊文·潘 Irving Penn
	50 摄影大师介绍之十一	亨利·卡蒂埃－布列松 Henri Cartier-Bresson