Look again at Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photograph Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare in Part Three. (If you can get to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London you can see an original print on permanent display in the Photography Gallery.) Is there a single element in the image that you could say is the pivotal ‘point’ to which the eye returns again and again? What information does this ‘point’ contain? Include a short response to Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare in your learning log. You can be as imaginative as you like. In order to contextualise your discussion you might want to include one or two of your own shots, and you may wish to refer to Rinko Kawauchi’s photograph mentioned above or the Theatres series by Hiroshi Sugimoto discussed in Part Three. Write about 150–300 words.
The image “Behind the “Gare Saint-Lazare” was photographed by Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908 – 2004) in 1932. An original print is on display in the Victoria and Albert museum in London.
The image was taken in black and white. The ground in the picture was covered with a sheet of water, almost like glass, nearly creating a mirror image of the picture again, the lighting must have been very bright causing the two men to be silhouettes.
The picture was taken behind a railway station in France, there is a play on words on the poster on the wall and the other poster of the person jumping looks just like the man jumping in the image.
The pivotal point my eyes are always drawn back to, is where the man’s heel has not quite hit the floor, it’s like he’s floating just above the surface of the water.
When Henri Cartier-Bresson photographed this image, he put his Leica camera through the railings not able to see what was on the other side, and pressed the shutter button. He claimed “this photograph was a matter of chance”, but I’m not so sure.
If I look at this image not as a photograph but as a story it asks a lot of questions, what has the man seen to make him run, where is he going, maybe he’s being chased, who’s the man behind the railings, or is he in front of the railings, is there a connection, is it a ladder on the floor or does it represent the rail track, and I could carry on.
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