All hell broke loose in the north county mall’s final days. But all was not lost
How a Jamestown Mall Sculpture Was Saved from the Wrecking Ball
About
Posts by :
Why dental photography is beneficial for patients
Matt Swinney, head of image sensing solutions, SES, and specialised business unit, Sony Europe, explains how documenting progress and precision with dental photography can benefit the practice and patients.
Photography is becoming an increasingly important tool in the arsenal of dental healthcare professionals, given the extent of ways it can elevate their practice.
Photography, once confined to capturing personal memories, now provides numerous tangible benefits across a range of dental treatments.
Beyond the aesthetics, photography has become an indispensable tool for tracking progress, engaging patients, fostering professional growth, simplifying insurance processes, and strengthening marketing strategies.
If you aren’t yet making full use of photography, here are a few reasons why it will be beneficial for your practice and patients:
Monitoring progress and engaging patients
One of the primary benefits of dental photography is its ability to meticulously document treatments with unparalleled accuracy.
These visual records stand as a tangible timeline of the patient’s journey. More than a routine archive, sharing these images with patients sparks a fresh understanding of their dental health. This facilitates informed decisions about treatment avenues, cultivating a collaborative bond between practitioner and patient.
This heightened patient involvement not only instils confidence in expert guidance but also holds the potential to bolster treatment approvals and positive outcomes.
Illuminating professional development
Beyond patient interaction, dental photography presents a unique channel for practitioners to evaluate their professional development.
A well-organised visual archive of patients’ dental conditions offers an introspective window to scrutinise your progress as a dental healthcare practitioner and identify areas for improvement. This retrospective analysis, often underestimated, could potentially serve as a catalyst for transformative growth.
Streamlining insurance procedures
In an era where paperwork and documentation can be taxing, dental photography emerges as an effective solution. The authenticity of photographs adds a new layer of credibility to the claim process.
These captured images, serving as clear evidence of dental work carried out, speed up approval processes and payments. This not only saves precious time but also fosters trust between the dentist, patient, and insurance provider.
Mastering marketing and financial efficiency
In the contemporary digital landscape, visual content reigns supreme. Proficiency in dental photography empowers practitioners to craft compelling and authentic marketing material. No longer reliant on external photographers, dentists can capture the essence of their practice firsthand.
Beyond creative control, this expertise translates into considerable cost savings. Funds that once went towards professional photographers can now be channelled into equipment and skill development.
If you’re just beginning to explore the potential of dental photography in your practice, the choice of camera and accessories might seem overwhelming – here are a few tips on what to look for and the decisions you might need to make:
Efficient data management
The integration of digital photography demands a robust approach to data management. The sheer volume of images generated requires efficient storage solutions. Embracing digital cameras not only facilitates seamless image uploads but also streamlines the organisation of patient records. This strategic move translates into heightened efficiency and improved patient care.
DSLR vs mirrorless
In the quest for the ideal camera, the Digital Single Reflex Lens (DSLR) vs mirrorless debate often arises. While DSLRs have held sway for years, mirrorless cameras have emerged as the drivers of innovation.
Recent market shifts underscore that the most cutting-edge technological advancements are becoming exclusive to mirrorless cameras. Notably, some entry-level DSLR models are no longer in production, affecting future availability of spare parts and servicing.
The compactness, reliability, and innovative features of mirrorless cameras have propelled them to the forefront of dental photography. The advantages are numerous – from lightweight portability to enhanced viewfinder accuracy, mirrorless cameras are poised to shape the future of visual dental documentation.
Sensor selection: APS-C vs full frame
The heart of the camera lies in its sensor. APS-C and full-frame sensors offer distinct photographic experiences, each with their own merits. APS-C, known for its compactness, enhances depth of field – ideal for capturing intricate dental details.
On the other hand, full-frame sensors capture more light, resulting in finer, noise-free images. The choice between the two hinges on a practitioner’s specific needs and preferences.
The magic of macro lens
Macrophotography is a crucial component in capturing essential images during patient interactions. This specialised form of extreme close-up photography is indispensable for attaining the desired intricacy when photographing teeth.
A macro lens, with a reproduction ratio of at least 1:1, is the architect of these visually comprehensive images. With a focal length of 90mm, the lens strikes the perfect balance between focus and field of view, ensuring every shot is exceptionally detailed.
Optical illumination and colour
Proper illumination is essential in dental photography and is achieved through well-chosen camera flash gear that balances effectiveness and unobtrusiveness. The ring flash encircles the lens for uniform illumination, while the twin flash offers a distinct effect, especially for close-ups. LED flash, which is gaining popularity, reduces glare and reflections for improved image quality.
Achieving accurate colour reproduction is paramount in dental illustrations, where precise hues are essential.
Therefore, choosing a camera that guarantees the highest quality, true-colour images throughout the dental workflow – not one that produces reddish, greenish, or purplish tones – is an important factor in the decision-making process.
Dental photography serves several functions within day-to-day practice, including instilling patient confidence in treatment progress, supplying vital evidence for insurance reimbursement, visually chronicling dentists’ professional evolution, and serving as a promotional mechanism for attracting new clients.
Whether you’re curating a budget-friendly dental photography kit or venturing into a more sophisticated setup featuring a larger camera sensor, embracing dental photography offers a substantial pathway for advancing your professional journey.
Follow Dentistry.co.uk on Instagram to keep up with all the latest dental news and trends.
Vivitar ECO35: The ‘disposable’ hero of photography
KF article top
During the latter half of the 1980s, the disposable camera went from a standing start to worldwide craze.
Fujifilm and Kodak had both investigated the concept, though seemed to be looking at it through different lenses. Fujifilm was first out of the blocks with the Quicksnap, which married a roll of the Japanese giant’s colour negative film with a simple shutter and aperture and a plastic lens. You shot the film to the end of the roll, then handed the entire thing in for processing. You got back your negatives and prints and no camera – it went to the great camera graveyard when the photo lab pulled it apart to get your film.
Kodak, who had already Fujifilm was developing a disposable camera before the Quicksnap appeared on the shelves, also unveiled a use-it-then-lose-it camera called the Fling in 1987.
Only one problem with the Fling; Kodak thought that 110 film – not the ubiquitous 35mm – was the perfect choice for a disposable. After only two years they ditched it and redesigned the Fling for 35mm film instead.
Disposable cameras sold first at a trickle, then a flood. Disposable cameras filled the same niche as mobile phones do today – the camera you take along when you don’t want to take your expensive “proper” camera. In the US, sales jumped from a little more than three million in 1988 to more than 20 million just two years later.
Fujifilm and Kodak were followed by other film manufacturers like Agfa and Konica, and all this first generation of disposables were broadly the same. A simple plastic body usually covered in a cardboard sleeve was discarded along with the camera’s simple mechanisms as soon as the film was removed. The concept of a camera that was completely disposable was something entirely new; previously, cameras had largely been considered expensive, prestige items.
“The original Quicksnaps and Flings were sonically welded together, which required them to be destroyed for the film to be extracted,” wrote Della Keyser in the blog Disposable America. “Camera companies could have recycled the destroyed plastic parts, but that would have meant additional costs. Consequently most single-use cameras ended their lives in landfills. As a result of these practices, by 1988 manufacturers were experiencing a backlash.”
The beginning of the disposable camera era came amid the start of consumer pushback against single-use items. At least one camera maker’s chief was among them.
In 1990, John Bourne was the president of Vivitar, a US photographic distributor which had started life in the 1930s as Ponder & Best and in the decades since had become one of the world’s biggest photographic brands – in some cases getting camera and lens manufacturers to make designs to their specification. After a turbulent 1980s, Vivitar has started to pivot from high end goods such as its well-regarded Series 1 range of lenses to cheaper goods such as point-and-shoot cameras.
Bourne wanted Vivitar to join the ranks of disposable camera manufacturers, but he didn’t want to contribute to the growing amount of waste produced by these use-once designs. He told Vivitar’s designer Steve Shull to come up with a “reusable disposable” which could be used again and again, but would still be easy to operate. Shull teamed up with Alan Stone Creative Services, and between them they came up with a camera that completely redefined what a disposable camera could (and should) be – the ECO35.
The ECO35 doesn’t look like rival disposable cameras, but like them it is ridiculously simple. It has only three moving parts – the shutter, the film advance knob and the rewind knob. The camera is smooth and curved and bulges out at one end: YouTuber David Mihaly (The Old Camera Guy) is completely correct when he says it feels like an old-school computer mouse. (Watch the video below.)
[embedded content]The ECO35 has a fixed focus 34mm lens with a fixed aperture of f/11; the shutter speed is also fixed and 1/125. Loaded with 200-ISO film, it would have been fine for outdoor photography on sunny days.
The ECO35 is completely black apart from a bright blur shutter button, sitting just in front of the oversized film advance knob. It looks more like a low-end compact than a shoot-once disposable, which it actually is. Virtually every other disposable was designed to only be opened when taken in for processing. The ECO35 has back door accessed by pressing a catch on the left side of the camera. You load the camera as you would any other simple compact.
The way Vivitar marketed the camera was almost unique. Vivitar sent film in bulk from Australia to China, where the cameras were made, and the film was loaded into each camera during assembly. (Early on the ECO35 usually came with 200-ISO film before Vivitar started using 400-ISO film.)
Once the film was shot, the photographer had three choices:
- Take it to be processed and disposed of like a normal disposable camera
- Ask the film lab to load the camera with fresh film so it could be used again
- Use the camera again with film they had already purchased
Vivitar intended the ECO35 to sell for a similar price to that of most other disposables, but they were essentially offering a loaded simple compact which could be loaded again and again and again as long as the photographer had access to fresh film: and if anything happened to it – well, it was cheap, so you could buy another one.
The ECO35 was introduced in 1990 and made an immediate impact – it won the 1991 IDEA Gold (Industrial Design Excellence Award) by the Design Society of America. Tucker Viemeister said of the camera: “You can use it and throw it away – or you can keep it and save the environment.”
“As a reusable disposable camera, the ECO35 breaks the mould,” wrote Bloomberg’s Bruce Nussbaum after the cameras won the award, in an article titled “To toss or not to toss“.
The ECO35 was successful enough for Vivitar to introduce a follow up. Spurred, perhaps, by the arrival of higher-spec disposable cameras with a battery-operated flash, Vivitar released the ECO35H, which added a flash hot shoe on top which you could attach a small flash unit. Popular Photography called it a “polycarbonate Brownie” in a 1991 round-up of cheap compacts, but was impressed with the results. “We loaded up the economical ECO with [Ilford] XP2 and shot in conditions from cloudy to bright sunny,” the magazine wrote. “And dang if it didn’t work. Granted, the imaging isn’t quite the equal of a more sophisticated autofocus P/S, but we think you get quite a lot for the money.”
The concept the ECO35 ushered in did not survive the 1990s: both simple compact cameras and colour print film became more affordable. By the time the 2000s arrived, digital started to make headway. While disposable cameras survived the changeover, the casual compact mostly folded once digital compact cameras became cheap enough.
But the “reusable disposable” camera didn’t die for good. Even before the digital take-over, Lomography unveiled a camera in keeping with the ECO35’s cheap-but-not-disposable ethic. In 2005, Lomography launched the first of its Lomolitos cameras, a disposable-like simple compact with fixed focus, shutter speed and aperture and pre-loaded with a roll of 200-ISO film.
Though the Lomolitos was discontinued by 2010, Lomography revived the concept again in 2017. Its’ Simple Use compact cameras – like the ECO35 more than 25 years before – came loaded with various Lomography films (from CN400 to Lady Grey to Metropolis). It offered a similar shooting experience to Vivitar’s design – with one big difference.
The ECO35 has a standard film take-up spool built into the camera, and you wind and rewind as you would any other manual advance camera. The Lomography Simple Use, on the other hand, requires you to advance all of the film out of the cassette before you can start shooting it.
The ECO35 might not have lived out to the bold claims of it saving the world, but it was a far-sighted response to the growing waste mountain produced by photography.
I’m Kosmo Foto’s founder and editor.
I’m a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
Latest posts by Stephen Dowling (see all)
Related
Art exhibition in Pune closes the year with colourful, pleasant narratives
Focusing the lens on rural lanes of Bengal: A photography exhibition in Delhi
Manvi Singh
Nov 22, 2023 01:59 PM IST
Delhi-based photographer Sanjay Das’ 34 frames capture the life of rural Bengal and its rich cultural heritage in this ongoing show at Bikaner House.
Bengal’s rich traditions unfold like a captivating story as one views artist Sanjay Das’ photographs displayed at the ongoing exhibition, The Red Hibiscus Trail, presented by Gallery Ragini.
“The present series shows my travels from over a decade, which have led me to learn about the rural cultural heritage of Bengal,” says Das, who has documented terracotta temples, tribes, architectural heritage, rituals, and folk arts of the region. “I specifically wanted to throw light on the rural side of Bengal because when someone talks about this place, they usually limit themselves to Kolkata. But that’s not all that this part of our country is all about,” he adds.
We’re now on WhatsApp. Click to join.
The Delhi-based lensman has, in fact, always been fascinated by the unexplored cultural aspects of Bengal. “I used to hear stories from my family about the place, but it wasn’t until I turned 42 that I first visited Bengal. I realised that a few days weren’t enough and thus went back later to capture the rural perspective of the state with a gameplay of lights from Sandakphu (Nepal) to the Sunderbans,” he recalls.
Ina Puri, curator of the exhibition, shares: “Das not only depicts the Victoria Memorial but also the craftsmanship, cultures and spiritual motivation of the people of Bengal. This is why we gave this name to the show, since if there’s a trail that depicts Bengal, then it is the jaba phool (red hibiscus).”
Catch It Live
What: The Red Hibiscus Trail
Where: Living Traditions Centre, Bikaner House, Pandara Road
On till: November 25
Timing: 11am to 7pm
Nearest Metro Station: Khan Market (Violet Line)
For more such stories follow @htcity.delhijunction
What is arts integration? Q&A with Mike Stone
Credit: Alison Yin for EdSource Today
Do you count on EdSource? If so, please make your donation today.
Maverick American maestro Leonard Bernstein once said that “a work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.”
That power to cultivate critical thinking is part of why Bernstein was a champion of arts integration, an innovative approach many educators are exploring these days as a creative way to amplify student learning amid an era of steep learning loss.
Certainly, Mike Stone, a veteran music teacher who cut his teeth on the baritone horn in the fourth grade, is a devotee of the practice. Coordinator of the visual and performing arts with the Bakersfield City School District, Stone is planning to use Proposition 28 funds, which are slated to arrive in schools in February, to bolster his already robust arts education program with 13 new teachers, all devoted to the benefits of art integration.
In arts integration, students meet dual learning objectives when they engage in the creative process to explore connections between an art form and another subject, say history or science, to gain a more nuanced understanding of both. Stone, who plays in the quartet Brass A La Carte and is also the president of the National Association for Music Education, Western Division, recently made time to chat about why arts integration can spark deeper learning.
Q: Can you give me an example of arts integration in a classroom?
A: An arts-integrated lesson might include students listening to “When Johnny Comes Marching Home,” a Civil War melody. Students would then learn to play the famous melody on a recorder, followed by a writing assignment on the sacrifices of soldiers who fought in the Civil War. In this example, there could be English language arts, history-social science, and music standards all integrated into the lesson.
Q: How does this kind of cross-pollination enhance learning?
A: Integrating arts standards in instruction enhances student learning by connecting the dots, so to speak. When we play an instrument, sing, dance or draw, we experience the learning by doing. My experience as a teacher is that such an approach connects cognitive and social realms of learning as students experience the learning firsthand.
It provides a synergetic connection that helps students learn across various content disciplines. Teachers have been using the concepts embedded in integration for many years. As the saying goes, we do not learn in a vacuum.
Q: What are you most excited about with this expansion of arts ed in your district?
A: I am truly inspired by the learning I have observed in our classrooms this fall. The district invested in 13 new arts teachers who are inspiring our students daily through dance, media arts, music, theater and visual arts. I think the fact that we are early adopters has given us a chance to create a model arts education program for California and the nation. Our music education program has been strong for years; now, we have the opportunity to build access and excellence in all the arts-dance, media arts, music, theater and visual arts. The sky’s the limit.
Q: What is the biggest challenge? Reward?
A: Our biggest challenge will be the recruitment and retention of teachers, since California and the nation are competing for teachers in a market where we have a severe shortage. In fact, with the passage of Proposition 28 in California, I estimate that our state could need over 7,000 credentialed arts teachers over the next year. It will mean that school districts must create arts education jobs where infrastructure, instructional support and scheduling promote a positive work environment where arts learning may thrive.
The biggest reward? Knowing that our children are getting a top-notch education that will help them succeed in life.
Q: Are all 13 new teachers you have coming on board in Bakersfield part of the arts integration theme?
A: Our teachers teach discrete arts standards, and also work to integrate standards, all while the classroom teacher is in the classroom supporting student learning. There is a collaborative spirit with our arts integration approach. We had training the other day, and the energy in that room was incredible.
Q: What are you doing to boost teacher retainment?
A: I’m working hard to make the teaching environment and the experience of these 13 new teachers as positive as possible because I know I won’t retain them unless they like coming to school. I really value that in our district. Retention of teachers is going to be as important as recruitment.
Q: What’s been the biggest hit with the children so far?
A: I have been in all of those teachers’ classrooms, and the kids are just loving it, especially visual arts. Middle school kids want to be expressive in a safe environment. What I see with our teachers is that they’re getting that opportunity to be expressive and kind of mellow out from a normal, hectic school day. They get to create at their own pace and follow the teacher’s lessons. That’s been very popular.
Q:What’s it like for you, visiting those new classes?
A: I enjoy visiting our primary classrooms more than any others. Learning is so new to these students, and they are very excited. Their smiles make all the work worth it. I look forward to seeing our young children move through the grade levels over the next few years. I even suspect that our students will do better in school because they are so motivated by their arts teachers. After all, kids who are learning the arts are happy to be at school.
Shamsa Alabbar x Manaal Alhammadi: A sculptural and refined collaboration
This partnership marks a decade of Shamsa Alabbar’s remarkable journey and to celebrate this milestone, the Emirati talent tapped one of her favourite abaya brands for a tribute collaboration that marry her sculptural fine jewellery design codes with Manaal Alhammadi’s refined abaya silhouettes.
Tarun Tahiliani on the New Indian Man’s Self-Discovery
The Voice of Fashion is an online fashion and design magazine. Completely distinct in the way it deals with the latest fashion trends and its approach to Indian Fashion industry, TVOF is an online platform that explores news, views, opinion pieces, reported articles, photo features, narrative style stories and shopping lists. It is a fashion magazine with strong reading content, videos and news.
Most fashion magazines do not deal with analytical pieces that give the reader an in-depth coverage of Indian fashion from a design and political perspective. The Voice of Fashion, not only does deep dive interviews with Indian fashion designers through articles and videos but it also studies brand culture and essence in many ways.
By using the combination of fashion news, videos, both local and global, the Voice of Fashion gives a panoramic cultural view of Indian fashion online, its business, politics, its design dilemmas, fashion weeks, top sponsors and how consumers respond to Indian fashion and designers.
Some will say we are more a journal than a typical fashion magazine but since we uplink fresh pieces every day on Indian fashion and beauty trends, there is perhaps more to us than a regular fashion magazine. A democratized platform without advertiser plugs and sold spaces, The Voice of Fashion is an Indian magazine with depth and nuance that uses news and topicality to decode the cultural intersections fashion makes with books, cinema, literature, music and art.
Layer AI raises $1.8m to supercharge game art production!
Mumbai: The creator-first, enterprise-ready tool for professional art creation, Layer AI, today announced the successful closing of their first seed round. Round included top serial entrepreneurs and industry legends like Jim Payne, gaming angels like Akin Babayigit, Michele Attisani, and Dilpesh Parmar and gaming VCs like The Games Fund, The Games Syndicate, GFR Fund, Laton Ventures along with other AI/Tech VCs and angels like 500 Global, Elena Silenok, Taimur Rashid. Additionally, the team also got a strategic investment from the US-based top art production and talent house Devoted Studios.
Getting to know the team
Layer, based in San Francisco, is founded by a team of passionate professionals with decades of experience in AI, Gaming, and Computer Vision. Volkan Gurel is the CEO, with a background in engineering and management from MIT, Hunch and Coinbase. Burcu is the CRO and served in multiple client-facing roles across multiple products from ads to game services at Unity & LoopMe. Kuo-chin, PhD is the CTO who recently joined bringing 20 years of experience in computer vision from Appen and XMotors. Finally, Mehmet is a self-taught technical artist and game developer who co-founded and sold Gram Games to Zynga in 2018.
The team strongly believes a compact elite team can out-compete larger players and will expand by staying selective and laser-focused on gaming. They believe that driving significant value to many businesses is critical to their own success, whether they are garage startups or industry giants. They are now hiring for their founding team positions:
What makes Layer unique?
Layer is simply unmatched when it comes to seamless integration into art pipelines and intuitive creator workflows, providing a great user experience and productivity boost. As proven by customer testimonials and detailed case studies, Layer leads the race as the tool of choice for game creators of all skill levels whether they are just starting their journey or have mastered game development. Layer proves any creator can go beyond their imagination and experiment with brand new ideas and art styles. A lot of AI tools today focus on either general use cases and foundational model training, or offer standalone cool features but don’t actually serve the everyday use cases. Most of them are either too complicated or are not designed for multi-disciplinary teams and certainly not enterprise ready.
“Layer supercharges artist teams’ productivity by 240 per cent and helps expedite the delivery of art to meet deadlines,” said Games United production lead,
“Layer AI supercharged Tripledot’s art creation, 3Xing our production speed and elevating quality. By reducing our reliance on outsourcing studios, we’ve not only saved significant costs but also brought the magic of art production in-house. We’re incredibly excited about this technology and eagerly await further updates. Tripledot Studios VP of creative.
Creators not only can go faster but can also supercharge their imagination. “Our art pipeline is not only faster, the variations Layer provides has been super helpful in increasing our creative potential and exploring brand new ideas”‘ said APPS Teknoloji artist. (more quotes will be available on our website by 10 of November)
Layer already empowers many artists to generate images based on their own art styles, allowing them to seamlessly iterate on these images through its premier AI-assisted canvas. Layer is the only generative AI solution that has been adopted by the teams of world’s largest mobile gaming studios. Layer has a clear direction in style-consistent output quality, speedy generation, and an intuitive interface that’s committed to solving game artists’ challenges using AI.
The CEO Volkan Gurel believed “Just like Web 2.0, Cloud computing or mobile unlocked novel applications that beat incumbents and other startup competitors based on a great product experience, we believe the AI revolution will be no different. AI has unlocked many new applications that will be built on top of this new tech stack and we plan to win by building the best product experience for artists in the enterprise leveraging the power of all the great foundational models and tools released by OpenAI, Meta, Stability AI and others. We’re creator-first, enterprise-ready and will remain model-agnostic”.
What’s ahead?
While Layer is focusing on perfecting 2D generation in games for mobile, then AAA studios, the team is already looking ahead. In the near future, Layer will generate both spine and sprite animations from text, images and other animations and further expand to 3D workflows. Layer will also build integrations into non-gaming workflows like marketing and advertising.
Layer will continue its dedication to style-consistent output quality, seamless workflow integrations that empower and free artists from redundant workflow overheads. “AI unlocked many opportunities for gaming and we want Layer to be the easiest tool to get onboard with and the fastest to ROI, “ said the CRO Burcu Ozcengiz. Layer is already serving numerous top-tier clients like Tripledot, Sciplay, Mag Interactive and hundreds of professional artists since launching in February 2023. Layer is also working to shore up their compliance program and will achieve SOC 2 and ISO certification to further cement the security and reliability of their offering for the enterprise.
“Being deeply rooted in game development we see pivotal changes coming to production with Gen-AI tools coming into play. We are not big fans of the idea of flooding the market with soulless content and Layer.AI sets itself apart by aiming to enhance, not replace, human artistry, liberating creators from mundane tasks. That is what we all believe in. We also like that their focus is on enterprise clients and their real needs for seamless integration into existing production pipelines.” – commented The Games Fund general partner Maria Kochmola.
Understanding Henri Cartier-Bresson Through 7 Photographs
Henri Cartier-Bresson was one of the most important and influential photographers in the history of art. Cartier-Bresson’s works present an intersection of artistic skill and journalistic documentation. His works reflect on the most tragic and significant moments of the twentieth century. The artist’s photographs can also help us learn more about the recent past. Here are 7 iconic images made by the great Henri Cartier-Bresson that you need to see!
1. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Gestapo Informer Recognized by a Woman…
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a true legend of photography, in both artistic and documentary sense. Unlike many of his colleagues, he never faked his images but simply observed things happening without intervening. His work during and after World War II was far from simply being impartial documentation of war crimes. It also functions as a deep study of characters and traumas. Cartier-Bresson’s main instrument was his artistic gaze. He wrote that good photographers had to train themselves to look all the time, even unconsciously.
One of the most famous images of World War II was captured by Cartier-Bresson in 1945 in Dessau, Germany. In a crowd of displaced persons waiting for repatriation, a woman recognizes a Gestapo informer. The collaborator tried to hide in the crowd but was noticed and brought forward. Originally, this scene was captured as a part of Cartier-Bresson’s film Le Retour, a documentary of the repatriation of French war prisoners. The photographer himself spent three years in a German work camp, escaping in 1944 and joining the French underground forces. However, the scene of the collaborator’s exposure was removed from the film and remained only in Cartier-Bresson’s photographs.
2. Alberto Giacometti, Maeght Gallery, Paris
Visual rhythms were essential for Cartier-Bresson’s work, yet he never staged them or specifically searched for them. Reality arranged itself without external interventions. You just had to know how to wait and how to look. In his worldview, every shape, every line, and every figure participated and depended on one another. The photograph of Alberto Giacometti, pacing frantically between his sculptures is both a portrait of the great sculptor and an ironic sketch. Somehow, the master turned into one of his own works, immersing and dissolving in his creations. Cartier-Bresson’s approach to portrait photography is evident in this image. The photographer wrote about having to put the camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.
Get the latest articles delivered to your inbox
Sign up to our Free Weekly Newsletter
Alberto Giacometti and Henri Cartier-Bresson became friends in the 1930s. During this time, both artists were enthralled by Surrealism. Despite working with different techniques, they shared a common approach to observing reality. They even liked the same artists like Paul Cezanne, Paolo Uccello, and Jan van Eyck. Cartier-Bresson once said that Giacometti’s intellect was an instrument in service of his sensibility. Perhaps, this could be applied to both of them.
3. Behind the Gare St Lazare
For Henri Cartier-Bresson, the main component of his work was the so-called decisive moment, a second when all elements of reality align perfectly. The photographer’s goal was to notice that moment and capture it. The legendary photograph Behind the Gare St Lazare illustrated this principle perfectly. Cartier-Bresson managed to take a photo right when an unknown passerby was leaping over a puddle. Curiously, with his attentive outlook on the world, the photographer was indifferent to developing images. The technical side of the process, the magic that keeps fascinating photographers even today, was of no interest to him. His involvement as a creator started and ended with the shutter of a camera lens, capturing a single moment of fleeting and unstable reality.
In fact, Gare Saint-Lazare, one of the main train stations in Paris, attracted the attention of many artists long before Cartier-Bresson’s created his image. Located in one of the central areas of the city, it can be found in the paintings of Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Gustave Caillebotte, and other artists of their generation.
4. Henri Matisse at his home, Vence
Henri Cartier-Bresson started his training as a visual artist taught by a Cubist Andre Lhoté. Lhoté was a friend of many avant-garde artists, yet his Cubist works had a much softer style, with bold colors and recognizable scenes from reality. Cartier-Bresson did not stay a painter for too long, finding his ideal medium in photography. Still, he kept practicing visual arts to develop his skills as a photographer. One of his main instruments to develop his unique artistic perspective was automatic drawing. Created with as little control as possible, it helped Cartier-Bresson find the balance between the conscious and the subconscious.
Nonetheless, despite his departure to the domain of photography, Cartier-Bresson never left the art world completely. He captured many famous artists in their natural environments. One of them was Henri Matisse. They met in 1944, soon after Cartier-Bresson escaped from the Nazi work camp. While still hiding from the Germans, Cartier-Bresson kept working on documenting the reality of occupied France. Matisse was not feeling well at the time, unable to walk after his cancer surgery, he was working on creating collages from paper cut-outs. Cartier-Bresson visited him frequently, observing the artist at work.
5. Martine Franck
Many of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s works present unusual angles and compositions, with some elements reaching beyond the borders of the picture plane. However, Carrier-Bresson never did this after the photograph was taken. He refused to edit or crop his images, insisting that his original vision did not need extra involvement. For Cartier-Bresson, photography was simultaneously the question and the answer, present in the camera’s viewfinder. Still, he insisted that the camera should be an extension of a photographer’s eye, hand, and senses.
Martine Franck was a Belgian photographer, a member of the Magnum Photos cooperative, and the second wife of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Unlike many of her other colleagues from Magnum, Franck avoided working on war photography. Instead, she focused on capturing the daily lives of women, children, and the elderly. Her works were full of love and sheer curiosity about the world and its inhabitants.
Unfortunately, the great shadow of her husband concealed a large part of Franck’s achievements. In 1970, she canceled her first-ever solo exhibition in London, after learning that the invitations advertised a meeting with Henri Cartier-Bresson, and not the artist being represented. Still, after Cartier-Bresson died in 2004, Martine Franck became the president of the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, preserving the work of the legendary photographer and promoting other gifted artists.
6. Seville, Spain
Henri Cartier-Bresson captured the turbulent climate of the 1930s in Spain in great detail, covering both violent conflicts and everyday life. This was an early period of Cartier-Bresson’s photographic work, and some experts notice the influence of his Cubist training in his compositions. Numerous figures present in the images were aligned with great precision. At the time, Henri Cartier-Bresson was only at the beginning of his path as a photographer, yet the carefully arranged details, including the interplay of human figures and buildings around them, already illustrated his skill and expertise.
During his visit to Seville in 1933, Cartier-Bresson noticed a group of children playing in the remains of a building, unaware of the photographer’s presence. Normally, ruins of destroyed houses are not happy places, but these children were not concerned with this. The loud and joyful game amidst these ruins could be seen as a promise of a new and better future. However, the Spanish Civil War would unfold just three years later.
7. Roman Amphitheater, Valencia, Spain by Henri Cartier Bresson
One of the most famous images made by Henri Cartier Bresson presents us with a complex composition of elements in need of explanation. Taken from the amphitheater ring used for bullfighting, the photograph focused on a rectangular structure of a wooden door through which the bull entered the arena. One guard is seen watching the performance through a small opening, while the other, a blurred figure in the background, is closing one of the doors behind. To capture this scene, Cartier-Bresson had to enter the arena during a fight.
The Spanish government several times attempted to ban bullfighting or at least prohibit killing bulls during fights, yet every proposal was met with a backlash from conservative politicians and citizens. Despite its cruelty, bullfighting remains an important part of Spanish cultural heritage, with its origins traced back to prehistoric times. In the 1930s, when Cartier-Bresson captured this image, bullfighting was considered a symbol of masculinity and fearlessness. Still, even in the early twentieth century, some activists were protesting the tradition, claiming it held Spain back from social and economic development.
