Henri Cartier-Bresson, Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris, 1932
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Dr. Shana Gallagher-Lindsay: [0:04] This is a photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who’s a French photographer. He’s known as the father of, or one of the prime examples of street photography and also photojournalism.
[0:17] This was done in 1932. This is the very beginning of his career. He worked for several decades, beginning in the 1930s.
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:27] I see. What makes this photograph so special?
Dr. Gallagher-Lindsay: [0:29] Well, it does look just like a snapshot, but this is really the beginning of what we know to be snapshot photography.
Dr. Harris: [0:35] We’re used to images that look like this, but back in 1932, this looked really new, in what way?
Dr. Gallagher-Lindsay: [0:42] It looked new because, first of all, the kind of figure who’s leaping. He’s really frozen, so there’s this pregnant moment below his heel and above the reflection. Just one second later, of course, he would disturb that whole reflection.
Dr. Harris: [0:58] Was this possible because of new technology, for him to capture this?
Dr. Gallagher-Lindsay: [1:01] Yeah, he’s using a camera that’s recently come to the market, called the Leica. That’s a 35mm camera. It’s a handheld, really mobile camera, that he and other photojournalists liked to use. It allows them to capture the split-second shutter speed of this particular image.
Dr. Harris: [1:20] Where are we here, what are we looking at?
Dr. Gallagher-Lindsay: [1:21] We’re in Paris. The image title is “The Place de l’Europe” and it’s behind a train station called the Gare St. Lazare. It’s a odd place, you seem to be pretty high up because you can see the rooftops in the background, and things are fenced. It seems to be zoned off, but you’re not really sure why it’s zoned off. It seems an odd space.
Dr. Harris: [1:43] Is that a puddle of water there that the reflection is in?
Dr. Gallagher-Lindsay: [1:47] Yeah, it’s a slightly flooded area. There’s construction going on. When he described how he shot this, he said that he was passing by a construction area, and there was a temporary fence with wooden slats and he just stuck the lens through as best he could, and happened to see this.
Dr. Harris: [2:05] We can see that all over the city, all the time, those temporary construction sites with little holes to look in some things.
Dr. Gallagher-Lindsay: [2:11] When he’s looking at his contact sheet after he’s printed these out on a preliminary basis, he would be drawn to this particular exposure because of certain formal things probably. He likes geometry, and so there’s a lot of that in this image, there’s a lot of matching of geometric form, such as the reflection of this man’s leap.
Dr. Harris: [2:33] The fence also being reflected.
Dr. Gallagher-Lindsay: [2:35] Exactly, the fence repeating. There are the rooftops, which are [a] stabilizing form. And so you have movement, but then you also have stability. This is something you get in the Renaissance, in the High Renaissance. They love this kind of thing.
[2:48] Also, there are arcing forms in the foreground. They’re repeated in the background as advertisements. This is a totally urban environment.
Dr. Harris: [2:58] It’s a kind of gritty urban environment.
Dr. Gallagher-Lindsay: [3:00] Right, and there appears to be an ad for maybe some sort of a circus, where you have leaping figures, just like in the foreground, in reality.
Dr. Harris: [3:06] Wow.
Dr. Gallagher-Lindsay: [3:07] It’s like life mirrors art or advertising.
Dr. Harris: [3:10] It’s like this balance between movement and very stabilizing forms at the same time.
Dr. Gallagher-Lindsay: [3:18] Exactly, and there’s also the idea of replication and reflection, which is something that photography, of course, is very much about and that modernists in general love to construct their works of art around.
Dr. Harris: [3:33] Are other photographs that he did similar to this?
Dr. Gallagher-Lindsay: [3:36] They are — again, with the geometry and people who reflect structures. Generally, he’s drawn to the working class.
Dr. Harris: [3:45] Those marginal areas of the city?
Dr. Gallagher-Lindsay: [3:47] Marginal areas, ruin zones, but there’s always a lot of life and vitality in there.
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