Seeing Again

Exhibition Review: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Revoir Paris (Seeing Paris Again) at Musée Carnavalet, Paris until October 31st, 2021.

I would never have guessed how popular a photography exhibition could be, until I found myself in the midst of a crowd, waiting for my turn to look at a square piece of printed paper, and having to fight to retain the place I had conquered for a moment longer, without giving in to the pressure on every side. Perhaps this is an exaggeration – but never had I ever seen such interest for a collection of photographs. The rooms dedicated to Cartier-Bresson at the Musée Carnavalet, the museum of the history of Paris, geometrically organised so as to offer the visitor interesting perspectives on to the next row of pictures, allow you to research, to look, to discover. What did Paris mean for Henri Cartier-Bresson? Why did he always come back? Why is it that his photography, in some mysterious way, resembles the city so much?

"This is what makes his photographs of such staggering beauty – the lines, the patters, the geometry they reveal."

​The exhibition is organised chronologically and shows visitors a selection of Cartier-Bresson’s Parisian shots, along with journal articles his work was featured in, his original Leica and even an interview with the photographer himself, recorded in English. Cartier-Bresson used Paris as a harbour, for him it was a place to come back to after his travels, and the place he would leave to embark on the next trip. When in Paris, he would roam the streets with his camera, and try to catch a fleeting moment in black-and-white. He preferred it to colours, believing that black and white was richer in its range of shades, that the greys, and whites, and blacks, created a more profound and detailed image. When comparing one of his black-and-white photographs taken on the Seine riverside to the coloured version of the same picture published by a newspaper, the richness he talks about can be understood: his photographs, so interested in the geometry of things, are made flat by colour. I believe this happens because the intricacy of lines, the patters he sees in the space around him, the patters he captures with his camera, would be less noticeable if coloured. One line would be green, another red, another yellow, and they would have less to connect them than their mingling greys.

This is what makes his photographs of such staggering beauty – the lines, the patters, the geometry they reveal. Henry Cartier-Bresson’s photographs and words made me think about what good photography is. I agree with him when he says that it is geometry, but I believe it is an interrupted geometry, a disturbed geometry. A few perfectly geometrical lines, proportioned, in relation with one another, make for a great backdrop, not a great photograph. Only when they are disturbed, curved, crossed, moved, often by a person, by a subject, do they become a great photograph. The movement is what captures the eye of the viewer, not the grid against which it is set. And this, I believe, is what connects Cartier-Bresson’s shots with Paris. Paris is one of the cities which have felt the influence of top-down, geometrical urbanisation more than any other, at least in Europe. And still, it is not the grid, not the geometrical map which makes the city, which gives it its atmosphere. It is the people in it, it is its movement, its life, which make it stand out. The exhibition Revoir Paris lets us look back on Paris, on Cartier-Bresson, and it is this looking back, this looking again, which allows us to see both in a different, intersectional way.

VIEW EXHIBITION SITE HERE

Author: Leda Maiello

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