Derriere la Gare Saint-Lazare
Henri Cartier-Bresson gave the world the jewels of the street photography. Whenever the world unfolded in some uncanny arrangement, Cartier-Bresson was there to report. Although he captured great politicians and artisans, he was unafraid of the most banal moments of life–as evident by his famous 1932 picture, Derriere la Gare Saint-Lazare.
“There was a plank fence around some repairs behind the Gare Saint-Lazare train station. I happened to be peeking through a gap in the fence with my camera at the moment the man jumped,” he explained in his usual laconic manner. He didn’t say anything about snapping it at precisely at ‘the decisive moment’. No wonder other photographers couldn’t believe Cartier-Bresson’s luck, much less his skill. The term that has come to be associated with him is “the decisive moment,” the English title of “Images á la Sauvette” (“Images on the Run” might be a closer translation),
Photographs of puddle jumpers were clichés by 1932, but Cartier-Bresson brings to his photo–Time magazine called it, “The Photo of the Century”–a layer after 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 also the ladder, which, flat, resembles a railroad track. (The pun works in French, too.)
However, the photo has a small secret. An artist who relied on both spontaneity and what his own eye tells him, Henri Cartier Bresson detested cropping. To prevent his editors from liberally cropping his pictures, Henri Cartier Bresson sent his pictures with a black border—the frame he himself imposed at the instant he snapped the picture. Considering this, it is extremely ironic that the jumping man picture that he is best remembered for, and the picture that defined his career was one of only two pictures, Henri Cartier Bresson cropped.
As he said, he was peeking through a gap in the fence, and the dark blemish on the left was where the grille cut off the lens’ view: “the space between the planks was not entirely wide enough for my lens, which is the reason the picture is cut off on the left,” he admitted.
Read H.C.-B.’s obituary by James Nachtwey here.
[...] Cartier-Bresson who abhorred darkroom manipulations – but whose iconic photo was ironically one of only two images he cropped – probably didn’t know the story behind Munkacsi’s photo. Not only how much the framing was [...]
Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika « Iconic Photos
August 4, 2010 at 10:50 pm
[...] event at a single time. There’s no decisive moment, no ‘punctum‘. It’s not a 30th of a second behind the Gare St-Lazare. It’s a messy collision of moments and locations glued together to make a sort of [...]
Bowblog - Make my Pano now
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www.Mansturbate.Blogspot.com
April 3, 2011 at 6:05 am
[...] Zitat von JeTexas …I only have trouble when I'm attempting to focus through a fence as I quickly realized that what I'm seeing through the viewfinder isn't exactly where the lens is pointed. That's the way HCB took one of his most famous pictures. Derriere la Gare Saint-Lazare [...]
Newbie question - is rangefinder easy to focus? - Seite 2 - Leica User Forum
September 7, 2011 at 6:44 pm
[...] photos, sometimes even including the sprocket holes of the film. Ironically, one of the few images he did crop was one of his most famous – Place de l’ Europe, Gara Saint Lazare. He was known to carry a small Leica camera, [...]
Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery | Topical Musings | Incoherent ramblings of an Australian graphic designer
December 4, 2011 at 1:22 pm
[...] recently paid at auction. For example, a photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson, a 1946 silver print of “Derrière la Gare Saint-Lazare,” Paris, 1932, sold at auction last year for a record price for the photographer of [...]
Out of Harm’s Way: Personal Blog – Preserving a Picture Perfect Collection – RiskConversation.com
February 6, 2012 at 4:18 pm
Alexander Brailowsky was the greatest Chopin expert of the 20th C (many say). He would be about 36 years old in 1932. Was a naturalized French citizen born in Ukraine. The man is running, probably, to get his ticket for the concert. The ripples from the ladder are like arpeggios from Brailowsky’s fingers. You can hear Brailowsky recorded on Youtube, I believe. He’s worth getting your feet wet for! – Belated
james raff
May 20, 2012 at 11:51 pm