Brett Weston on Cartier-Bresson, craft

A

Anthony

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Q - How do you feel about Henri Cartier-Bresson's work?

Weston - Cartier-Bresson is not really a photographer - to me that is. He's a philosopher and a photojournalist but not a photographer. He can't print, for starters. He has someone do it for him. To me his is not a photographer in the sense that my father was, or Ansel Adams or myself are. He is more interested in the social scene.
. . .​

. . . Seeing is the important thing. One's perceptions come first. Darkroom work is the continuation of what you saw on the ground glass. It is the completion, the finalization of the image seen on the back of the ground glass. Your final perception must be printed beautifully if it is going to be successful. That's what I have against Cartier-Bresson.

Comments?
 
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Photography is a medium. Media can be applied in many ways (my examples are mostly American because that's whom I best know) ...

  • Commercial - Avadon, Karsh
  • Documentarian - Weegee, Capra, Atget, Cartier-Bresson, Brassai
  • Art - Weston, Adams, Atget, Brassai, Man Ray
Sometimes, like with Atget, the work starts out as Commercial, but with the test of time, is recognized as art.

But Cartier-Bresson also fits into a fourth use of media:

  • Propaganda - Cartier-Bresson, Salgado, Lange, Evans, Riefenstahl
I generally don't think these categories are better- or worse relative to each other. I love fine paintings, but that doesn't mean the man painting my house is somehow less of a painter - just different.

But I really, really, REALLY dislike art in the service of propaganda. It's almost always fundamentally dishonest and decontextualized to peddle some socio-political agenda. Dorthea Lange is known to have posed some of her Depression era photos to heighten the ennui. The iconic Life Magazine photo of a sailor kissing a nurse on VJ day is likely to have been a construct. Salgado shows workers only as victims, not as heroic figures. Riefenstahl openly pimped for the Nazis etc.

I prefer my artistic fraud to be more openly defined - Advertising. There, the motive is obvious and known to all: Selling things. But I am openly suspicious of all propagandists - no matter how fine their craft - because I don't know what they are not showing me or telling me...
 
I like those points. And I agree with most of them.

But Brett Weston said that Cartier-Bresson wasn't a photographer. Is that an extreme statement? I mean even Riefenstahl possessed a thorough knowledge of cinematography, yeah?

Is Weston showing his narrow mindedness here, or his inability to articulate cohesively? Is Cartier-Bresson's work really that sloppy?

(I'm prompting comment here - there's no wrong answer. And thank you - great remarks . . . )
 
I think Brett Weston was being rather unfair in his comments about HCB not printing his own work. HCB wasn't just a snapper. He had strong ideas about how he wanted his photographs to look - and not just uncropped. He had his printer in Paris, and once rejected a whole exhibition's worth of prints because they had been done with too much contrast. There is a film somewhere i which he discusses this.
Brett Weston may not have held HCB in high regard, but, in my opinion, HCB certainly did the better work. His best work is full of a whole range of emotion; humour, despair, touching poignancy. Brett Weston's work, in comparison, looks rather cold, emotionless, formal. It might be well conceived, and beautifully printed, but it doesn't reach out and touch me.

Alan
 
Totally agree with everything Alan C said above. Was HCB not a photographer because he didn't produce the kind of work you do? I think not! Looking at HCB's images, it's very obvious (to me, anyway) that he was very careful and precise about what he included or excluded from the frame. The decisive moment? HCB applied this in spades!

Is HCB not a photographer because he doesn't print his own work? There are many recognized photographers that don't print their own work. Is guess they aren't photographers! ;)

How 'bout someone like Sebastiao Salgado? Is he a photographer?

Me thinks maybe we need to move beyond all these labels we all apply and look at the images... Do they show emotion? Do they reveal a story? Do they strike some sort of chord deep in your soul? Do they cause you to cry? Laugh? You get the idea...
 
Incidentally, the problem with "You're not a photographer because you don't make your own prints" could easily be transmuted into 'You're not a photographer because you don't develop your own film"

Absurd on both counts.
 
Alan Clark said:
I think Brett Weston was being rather unfair in his comments about HCB not printing his own work. HCB wasn't just a snapper. He had strong ideas about how he wanted his photographs to look - and not just uncropped. He had his printer in Paris, and once rejected a whole exhibition's worth of prints because they had been done with too much contrast. There is a film somewhere i which he discusses this.
Brett Weston may not have held HCB in high regard, but, in my opinion, HCB certainly did the better work. His best work is full of a whole range of emotion; humour, despair, touching poignancy. Brett Weston's work, in comparison, looks rather cold, emotionless, formal. It might be well conceived, and beautifully printed, but it doesn't reach out and touch me.

Alan
Click to expand...


I am sort of the same mind here. Weston's work is technically fine, but not compelling even by the standards of other formalists like his father and Adams.

Moreover, the claim is silly on its face. Is the Director Of Photography on a movie "not a photographer" because they neither shoot, develop, nor print the film itself?

My criticism of HCB is that he is often a propagandist in artist's drag, as I noted elsewhere in this thread.
 
Is Weston a little too closed minded? Is he refusing to see photography as a language? After all, Cartier-Bresson used it to communicate something different than Weston did.

Is it dangerously narrow thinking to state that the type of photography Brett Weston, Edward Weston, and Ansel Adams did is the only type that qualifies as photography? After all, that's the lovely thing about photography - it has infinite possibilities.

And what about this notion - -

Some would say that the print quality of, for example Garry Winogrand or Robert Frank is harsh and unpleasant . . . that their photographs might be more powerful - certainly more pleasant to look at - if the print quality was better. Does Weston have a point? Is print quality akin to a writer using stronger verbs and eliminating passive voice? After all, we all enjoy reading better crafted writing, don't we?

Well comrades?
 
Do poets print their own books? Do printers make their own paper? Do architects lay their own bricks? Do astronauts construct their own spaceships? Did Steve Jobs assemble iPhones? Should music be played only by the composer?

If you take photographs, you're a photographer. Some are better than others. Some of them may have opinions, but we don't judge the quality of their opinions by the quality of their photographs, except in the strictly limited field of technique. In everything else, it's a level playing field.
 
I went back and reexamined some of Brett Weston's work in a large format book I have here. I have to revise my opinion of it upward. Some of it truly is fine and holds up over time. Much better than I remember it.
 
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