The 'decisive moment' in Photography

Henri Carter-Bresson is know for his ideas about photography and the concept of the decisive moment when composition and action come together. The photographer's role is to select the precise moment in time that will best describe what their intentions may be. The decisive moment has come to mean the perfect second to press the shutter.

He was arguably the last century’s greatest photographer, and the photograph, Derriere la Gare Saint-Lazare, was to Time magazine, “The Photo of the Century”. While honored and remembered as the premier photojournalist, Henri Cartier-Bresson also gave the world the jewels of the street photography, most famous among which was this 1932 picture. By then, photographs of puddle jumpers were clichés, but as New York Times remembered, “Cartier-Bresson brings to his image layer on layer of fresh and uncanny detail: the figure of a leaping dancer on a pair of posters on a wall behind the man mirrors him and his reflection in the water; the rippling circles made by the ladder echo circular bands of discarded metal debris; another poster, advertising a performer named Railowsky, puns with the railway station and the ladder, which, flat, resembles a railroad track.”

This image illustrates the idea of a decisive moment becasue the mans foot is about to touch the still water. The reflection holds the moment in time and the figures in the background are silhouetes that seem to reflect and bear witness to the action that we as the audeince know is about to happen. The circlular pipes and semicircles anticipate this action as well. This image in its simplicity and the way it captures a moment in time so decisivly deseves to be an iconic image of this age.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Derriere la Gare Saint-Lazare, 1932.