Erich Consemöller. Untitled (Woman [Lis Beyer or Ise Gropius] in B3 club chair by Marcel Breuer wearing a mask by Oskar Schlemmer and a dress in fabric designed by Beyer). c. 1926, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
I went to MoMA today and saw some really great John Stezaker collages from their permanent collection. I feel as though I saw them somewhere else (maybe the Pictures Generation?), but I think they’re really great. These are from his series, Masks, which I think are much more successful than those from Marriage.
The James Ensor show and In & Out of Amsterdam are also both worth seeing. The Erotic Object is worth looking at, even if it’s a small show comprised mainly of things that are usually on display at the museum.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, quite possibly my favorite photographer of all time, is going to have a 300-photograph retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in April 2010. Just as Richard Avedon is being recognized as more than just a fashion photographer, but as an influential force who helped shaped American culture, it seems as though Cartier-Bresson, too, may finally get his place in the annals of modern art’s masters.
It’s organized by Peter Galassi, the chief curator of Photographs at MoMA, who, in 1987 organized an exhibit of Cartier-Bresson’s early work. In the forward to the accompanying catalogue, Galassi correctly points out that Cartier-Bresson has been more or less pushed into a corner where he is either placed within a historical context (one of the first photographers to use the small, portable 35mm Leica instead of large, heavy cameras), or described in the context of the “decisive moment” photographer, both of which scratch the surface of his important, complex, and emotive œuvre. It’s very easy to describe his work along the simplistic terms of a stealthy French photojournalist who captured decisive moments around the world with his Leica, yet it completely undermines his position as one of the 20th century’s preeminent photographers, one who was completely in touch with his time and many of the leading figures who helped shaped it.
I find the term photojournalist to be deceiving, because I think it’s quite self-evident in the work that Cartier-Bresson cared little about reporting on news events. He sent himself around the world, never in search of a particular story, but in search of the human condition. And whatever he found, no matter how banal or exquisite, he placed upon it a formally rigorous composition, elevating it to high art. Nothing was too mundane to be photographed. What I have always appreciated most about his photography is that a sensitive eye and careful intuition can turn anything into a work of art. His pictures all have a harmonious balance, even when the scene depicted is in disorder. Children play along the Berlin Wall, through the dilapidated streets of Mexican cities, or the poor suburbs of Paris. Unlike the later generation of “photojournalists,” such as Robert Frank or Garry Winogrand, Cartier-Bresson did not allow chaos to create a chaotic picture. That is not to suggest that the compositions of Frank or Winogrand are any less precise than Cartier-Bresson’s; they serve different purposes for different photographers. And it can be argued that all three of the aforementioned photographers used the street as a backdrop upon which an interesting human drama could unfold — a drama that might give the viewer hints of the entire picture, but would never be as didactic as a photographer covering a particular story, or trying to assert a certain position.
Example: In 1954, Cartier-Bresson was the first Western photographer admitted into the Soviet Union. The pictures that ensued are not what one might expect. Cartier-Bresson was never interested in creating politically charged or inflammatory pictures. It’s true that he was accompanied by a government-appointed translator, but I believe that the pictures would have been the same had he been left to his own devices. Perhaps these photos worked against Western Cold War propaganda in that they offered a view into Communist states that did not conform to the rhetoric that was being perpetuated abroad. There are many pictures that are particular to Russia (the portraits of Stalin, or the traditional Soviet costume and architecture), yet the majority of the photos could have been taken anywhere and have little to do with Communism, Russia, or the specifics of any particular locale, as much as they speak to Cartier-Bresson’s desire to impose upon all his subjects a rigid geometry. In Russia, he went to department stores, train stations, churches, public pools, parks, schools, markets — anywhere people would be. In his native Paris or in distant Japan, he photographed throughout the same locations, never so much interested in dissecting the particularities of any specific culture, so much as he was interested in allowing scenes to unfold before his lens. As he singled them out through his meticulous (yet unfiltered and intuitive) photographic process, he elevated them to the level of high art.
In many instances he uses people as design elements, a sort of antithesis to portraiture. Yet he is never malicious in his intent, sometimes taking the most tender and personal portraits of his subjects. The photos are always captivating and intriguing in and of themselves because there always seems to be other forces at work outside of the picture frame. People are often placed in illogical positions or within contexts that cannot be explained. Many of his photos seem stranger than fiction, and they accept that the only story they tell is one imagined by the viewer.
It soon becomes clear that Cartier-Bresson enjoyed taking photographs that were not only aesthetically pleasing, but also imbued with a mystery, which, when viewed as a collective whole, begin to unveil humanity in all its forms, from life and death, to love and sadness. His life’s work encompasses every human emotion and condition, regardless of any cultural conditions or assumptions.
