Rhymes and Assonances: Two Photographers At the Mirror

“Photography implies the recognition of a rhythm in the world of real things. What the eye does is to find and focus on the particular subject within the mass of reality; what the camera does is simply to register upon a film the decision made by eye.” (Henri Cartier-Bresson)

Henri Cartier-Bresson, “Hyères.” France, 1932

In poetry, I have always loved assonances more than rhymes. Rhyme is the slavish repetition of sounds and letters, while assonance is different. It's an imperfect form of rhyme that occurs when two or more terminal words in a verse repeat the same vowel sound but with different consonants. 

In photography rhymes hardly exist, but it's stimulating to look for assonances. Especially if they are miles and miles apart.

A photographer who is in Olympus, if not on the highest bench, is certainly Henri Cartier-Bresson. It's useless to write about him because everything has been written and said, and I certainly do not have the pride of being able to say something new. I can only leaf through his books, read his writings, and admire in ecstasy, like someone who is thirsty and finds a source of fresh water and drinks with joined hands: these are his photographs.

Everyone has favorite photos of the various photographers, and for sure everyone has their own about Cartier-Bresson.

One of the last books I bought about him was precisely on this theme, Images and Words, in which different personalities of culture chose a photo of him and explained the reason for the choice. Very interesting.

I love this 1932 photo, “Hyères”, published in what was his manifesto and one of the most important books in the history of photography, Images à la Sauvette, published in 1952 by Simon and Schuster in France and America, where it was precisely translated with the title The Decisive Moment. The book collected the two phases of the French photographer, the pre-Magnum obsessed with form, with photographs taken from 1932 to 1947 in the West, and then the post-Magnum ones from 1947 to 1952, made especially in the East, with a more social and political style.

This is a photograph taken with his Leica 50mm which falls within the classic style of “fishing technique”, that is, after finding a good location, one waits from above for a good subject to enter the frame to complete the perfect composition.

And here is the cyclist who leaps from right to left and is stopped, at the decisive moment, in the empty space, while the spiral lines of the ladder guide the eye, following lines and patterns, right towards the cyclist.

Cartier-Bresson is an undisputed master in this: image with a perfect composition like a score of classical music but with that jazzy touch that makes it more dynamic; the slightly blurred silhouette of the cyclist looks like a brushstroke of a jazz drummer.

It's a famed and well-known image, used in book covers and in photography lessons. It's class, composition, eye, and speed.

Inevitably, the art of photography has always been identified with Western, European, and American masters. But it's true that, for example, photography landed in Japan just ten years after Daguerre invented it in France in 1839, thanks to the Dutch merchants who brought the new instrument to the port of Nagasaki.

Without forgetting the famous "Yokohama School" (Yokohama Shashin) which in the second half of the nineteenth century mixed the photographic technique with the skill of local painters, creating that famous style that in Europe was called Pictorialism.

Anonymous, “In the Satake Park in Mukojima,” 1880-1900

It's not my intention to tell the history of Japanese Photography here, even if it is a topic that interests me a lot. It's certainly a fascinating country, which was reborn after the terrible earthquake of 1923 and the American bombing.

In the same year Cartier-Bresson took that photograph, in 1930, in Japan, Domon Ken inaugurated photographic realism, becoming the Japanese photographer par excellence, who represented a reality devoid of pre-war propaganda. This first photographic school knew the work of the French photographer well, thanks to the “Group Photo” exhibition of 1951.

Ishimoto Yasuhiro, “On a Tokyo street”, 1953

And when the famous itinerant photographic exhibition The Family of Man arrived in Nihonbashi in 1956, there were six photographers representing Japan among the 68 participating countries. 

So, western dominance over photographic vision is not so obvious. From Domon Ken to Daido Moriyama and Araki, Japan has profoundly marked the global photographic discourse since its inception.

In 1956, Narahara Ikkō, at the age of 24, held his first photographic exhibition, entitled Human Land, in which he recounted his three years living in a village of Nagasaki buried by the lava of the volcano. His work made him famous until he became one of the founders of VIVO, in 1959, one of the strongest photo collectives in Japan.

Narahara Ikkō, “Island without green.” From the Human Land series, No. 41.
Gunkanjima, Nagasaki, 1954-57

One of these photos, from the Human Land series, was taken from above a courtyard with stairs, and at the bottom there is a narrow street where a lady is walking; a few more steps and the woman will disappear behind the wall on the left.

Unlike the Cartier-Bresson photo, there is no spiral movement here, but solid diagonal, horizontal and vertical lines. Now it is the woman at the top, in the small portion of space between the walls, that strikes: she is only there for a short time, then she will disappear, just like the French cyclist.

Here is the assonance, different consonants but same vowels and sound. Twenty years and miles and miles apart, geographically speaking. Two completely different worlds: Paris and Nagasaki. The decisive moment that makes your eyes tremble with pleasure.

I am not here to compare the skill between these two photographers, Cartier-Bresson is immense, and mine is only a suggestion, my personal point of view.

But I think these two photos are telling us something: skill is possible everywhere; we must extend the range of our knowledge to the maximum. The wider the circles on the surface of the water, the deeper the stone has gone.

We turn our certainties upside down, let ourselves be overwhelmed by the vertigos, we enjoy in losing our balance.

We find the decisive moment wherever it occurs, even in a remote village of Nagasaki.

This is the wonder of existence, for me.

And besides, the rhymes are so boring...

Henri Cartier-Bresson: “L'Esposizione / The Exhibition" (Contrasto / Center Pompidou, 2015)

Henri Cartier-Bresson: “Cartier-Bresson: Images and words” (Contrasto, 2015)

“Secret Japan – Masterpieces of 19th century photography” (Giunti, 2016)

“Japan: A self-portrait. Photographs 1945-1964” (Flammarion, 2004)

Domon Ken: “The Master of Japanese Realism” (SKIRA, 2016)

Italian version