The Decisive Moment
It’s not every day that you see or learn something that changes the course of your life. But it is every day that we can seek these nuggets of wisdom found in art, music, experience, books, and nature.
These can be decisive moments.
Yesterday was one of those moments when I learned of a French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and his monumental photograph, “Behind the Gare St. Lazare” from 1932.
He called this shot “the decisive moment”, which became a concept in photography.
Before the 1930s, photography was stationary. A photographer had an abundance of equipment to lug around and set up, but as technology advanced, photographers could essentially carry their camera in their pocket, much like how we do today with our mobile phones.
As a result, they could capture action and moments in the real world.
Henri Cartier-Bresson said, “Photography is nothing - it's life that interests me...The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.”
The camera’s advancement led to the proliferation of street photography and photojournalism.
The apex of photography now, in many ways, is to capture the decisive moment or the climax of the scene. For example, a moment at a protest that spurred a revolution, the uppercut that led to a knockout of a great boxer, lovers reuniting after a war, or even an interesting everyday moment.
“Behind the Gare St. Lazare” is the archetype decisive moment, capturing a man gracefully galavanting across a puddle just before he is about to land.
The composition seems perfect: a perfectly still puddle mirrors the man’s leap and a poster in the background of a dancer doing the same, adjacent to an iconic railway station. A railway station, a place of movement, was frozen in time.
In fact, the same railway station was a famous setting where 19th-century artists such as Manet, Monet, and Caillebotte painted.
Cartier-Bresson’s photograph was this railway station’s decisive moment: a shift to a fast-paced Europe with more modern trains, factories, and cars and also signified by being photographed rather than painted.
But where was this unknown man jumping to? Why was he hurrying?
Was he about to walk on water or make a big splash?
This may be man’s greatest tragedy, running to nowhere and landing in a puddle.
Yet it may be man’s greatest attribute, taking a leap of faith to change the world.
Each man has decisive moments.
Decisive moments are all around us, if we only take action to capture them.
No one’s capturing the moment but you.
Are you ready to leap?
