The Decisive Moment

In Gerry Badgers book, The Genius Of Photography he talks in relation to Henri Cartier-Bresson’s book The Decisive Moment; 

• "The instant when a prescient photographer anticipates a significant moment in the continuous flux of life and captures it in a fraction of a second." (Badger, 2007)
  

• "It is a notion often misunderstood. The decisive moment is not necessarily the instant of peak action - the soldier dropping as the bullet hits him in Capa's picture, the woman denouncing a suspected Gestapo stool pigeon in an image Catier-Bresson took at the end of the war. It refers, rather, to the moment when every element in the view finder coalesces to make a picture, an image."  (Badger, 2007)
  

I feel the latter of these two quotes is very pertinent to DiCorcia's Heads, series. It is obvious from looking at the subjects of the Heads series (their thoughtful gazes, wistful look and on the whole simply how interesting his images are), that DiCorcia has not just "snapped" away to obtain these images, DiCorcia has obviously waited for that "decisive" moment.

Affect Theory

Affect theory has been an interesting yet very difficult and complicated topic to research and I am only going to cover it very briefly, lest I get sidetracked!

There are many different writers on affect theory and many differing view points. The most notable of the writers on affect theory is Silvan Tomkins (it his him the theory is attributed to). My research for this topic has mostly come from a paper called A Primer of Affect Psychology by Vernon C Kelly, the paper is written with the purpose of introducing Tomkins work to the reader. The excerpt below is from Kelly's paper;

"There is no best place to begin any description of affect psychology. It would not be useful to start with a simple definition of “affect” because affect is best understood when seen in the overall context of its general purpose. However, before going there, it is good for you to know that an affect is a biological event, a normal part of the everyday functioning of our central nervous system (CNS). An affect is, in some respects, like a normal knee jerk reflex. If one applies the proper stimulus to the patella tendon—a tap with a small hammer—in just the right place with just the right amount of force, then the lower leg will jerk upwards. Similarly, if the proper stimulus is received in the CNS, an affect is triggered. How this takes place will become clear later on, but for now, please do not think of an affect as some kind of mysterious psychological event. It is not. It is simply a normal part of brain functioning that has evolved in our species for a specific purpose. Affects are so much a part of everyday life that you seldom think about them and often do not even recognise their presence."

 

Re-Shoot Feedback

From our group session and the feedback I received regarding my images, I have been advised to look at the following areas;

• Affect Theory - Silvan Tomkin/Eve Sedgewick
• What makes my approach different
• ?Focus on men or women and justify my choice
• Analyse DiCorcias Choice
• The Decisive Moment - Cartier Bresson

The posts that follow will discuss the above points.

Heads emulation re-shoot

So, from discussing my original shoots with my group, some advice given was to try and capture the people with less distracting features in the background, ie; people! For my re-shoot, I still used Chester as the location, the fact that you can get up reasonably high innocuously helps for this emulation project, the only difference being this time I opted to change my position. I spent appoximately 3 hours perched in the same position and took about 70 pictures, I tried to be as calculated in my choices of subjects, looking for people that again looked interesting, (whatever I percieved as interesting anyway). I faced similar issues to the previous shoot; I went handheld as the space was too large to focus the camera in one position and hope for people to walk through a pre-determined spot. I again used a 70-300mm telephoto lens, light was a slight issue so I had to up the ISO to 1250 to allow me to use a faster shutter speed (people walk pretty quick!). Anyway, below are the 14 images I have decided to use as part of this second batch.

The Street

The exact location

Assignment 3 - My "Heads" emulation

For my emulation of Philip-Lorca DiCorcia's Heads series I decided to shoot in Chester. It was my intention to shoot from the walls, in particular the wall that passes over theEastgate street and holds the Chester clock 

In reality, when I actually setup to take the images from this point, I felt I was too high and that the angle I was shooting at (I was using a 70-300mm telephoto lens) was too harsh and if I shot further into the distance I felt that the surroundings where too distracting. So... I moved up onto the rows next to the Chester cross.

From this position I could reduce the angle with which I took my photographs but I was still faced with a problem... I couldn't focus on the one area, because the space was so big for people to pass through, the chances of a suitable subject passing over a preset spot where slim (I tried and got nothing). It was then that I realised why DiCorcia had chosen the spot he did, beneath the scaffolding he used the path was narrow, so his subjects had to pass through his spot, mine didn't! So I decided in order to get my images, I would remain in the same spot, and the camera would be rigged to the tripod still, but I would pan it to capture my subjects. 

Below are my resulting images which I will present to my group for feedback. Overall I am happy with the images I have achieved for a first attempt. I have cropped the images to the same ratio that DiCorcia uses so I have lost some image quality, but I felt the ratio of medium format changes the feeling of the images and seems to give them something more with regards to focus. Something else I realised with this shoot is; the amount of information we lose when we decided to only shoot a persons head and shoulders and how much this creates more "mystery" around the image. 

There is no information included with each of the images, staying true to DiCorcia's style with this series, I want the viewer to create their own backstory for each image. I tried to be very selective with my choice of subjects, I looked for people I thought looked interesting.