LEONARD FREED talks about Henri Cartier-Bresson:
Grabbing
my hand, Peggy, my girlfriend with Swedish, German
and French passports pulled me to a display window
of one of the many student bookshops along Paris’s
Boulevard St.Michel. In the early 1950’s
Peggy was beautiful, exciting and creative and
what she was pointing to was the newly published
book by the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson
– “The Decisive Moment”. She
was thrilled by the photos and I by her. Inside
the shop she turned each page, child-like with
delight. The war years had taken a toll on her
generation. The future was something they desperately
wanted to believe in and I could see these pictures
were therapeutic. Later, when my interest did
turn to photography, I remembered this scene.
It was my turn to be child-like with delight.
About this particular image – who is the
third man standing, looking through the curtain
next to the two already there? It is us. Like
them we come upon a scene, a scene pointed out
by Henri Cartier-Bresson. We, unlike Henri, are
voyeurs. He has captured a moment in time while
we return again and again, studying every detail.
Is it not interesting that the man with the bowler
hat has no sense of our presence. He neither looks
through the curtain nor at us, his voyeurism is
internal. Where and when the photograph was taken,
I can only guess.Was it before or after I was
born? Does it make a difference? What I do know
is that it has now entered into my history, my
reference book, stored in my memory. It will be
used again and again in conversation with friends,
photographers 7 critics.
Leonard Freed, New York, July 2003
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