To crop or not to crop.....

[Jeff S]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

HCB took the picture he was able to take and that is fine, but because I have now learnt that it is a cropped photo (represented as complete image in its reproduction) it is not the same to me as it I thought it was.

 

I have not 'caved in' as you say and still believe that an after the event crop is not as satisfactory as getting it right first time.

 

Forgive my persistence, Jeff, but this is the first time I see your answer to my question. That is, you do indeed hold HCB's le Gare photo in a lesser regard because of the crop. I respect your view, but as you say, views differ.

 

One factor, however, which you seem not to consider...or perhaps consider, but dismiss...is that HCB had to know he was going to crop at the time he took the photo. He had to see the fence in the way, and decided to take the photo anyway. He didn't just see the photo afterward and realize it needed cropping. So, I think he got it right the first time...in his mind...and captured the photo the only way possible.

 

In your most pure sense, I guess you think he shouldn't have taken it...or maybe he should have torn down the fence first. For me, the end result met his vision. (Although if it's true, as someone suggested above, that the shot was 'staged' in some way...I hadn't heard that...then my opinion is far different.)

 

Jeff

[delander †]

Jeff,

 

I dont know if you are aware of the work of James Ravilious which is also reproduced with a black border.

In the book "An English Eye The Photographs of James Ravilious" by Peter Hamilton the author writes on page 52

"He [Ravilious] composes his pictures in the camera [normally a Leica M], lining them up precisely within the frame of the 24x36 mm negative, and this is the reason why (like Cartier-Bresson) he insists on his prints being shown with a small black line of film rebate [my underlining] around the image, delineating the picture"

 

So it seems that Ravilious, quite an acclaimed photographer who was a fan of HCB, is also interested in showing the full image as captured.

 

IMHO Ravilious does this because he believes that the creative moment, where the highest artistic and craft skill occurs, is when the picture is taken.

 

So maybe I am not alone in the belief that the highest achievement is to get picture right when the shutter clicks. Following that you have the opportunity to crop at leisure, the more you have to do this to correct the picture the farther you go down the scale of artistic achievement.

 

Jeff

[Jeff S]

I'm well aware of many photographers' emphasis on printing the entire image. I personally find the technique more compelling on 8x10 contact prints by photographers like E. Weston. But, in general, the whole black border thing bores me.

 

However, once again, your post dances around my specific question. I have used one...and only one...photo to use in this discussion. It took me 4 posts just to have you...still very indirectly...clarify that you hold the le Gare image in lesser regard due to the crop. In my last post, I discussed what you think HCB should have done, given your purest views, and asked you to consider that he took the photo as intended, and that he had no other choice other than to not take it.

 

But, if you insist on broadening the discussion, then I suggest that in your purist world, some of the greatest photographs in history would have never been taken, or would have been diminished in regard.

 

Jeff

[danyves]

HENRI CARTIER- BRESSON

 

Mention obligatoire

 

Pr!ère de reproduire cette photo intégralement

sans en modifier le cadrage.

 

 

PLEASE

 

DO NOT CROP

 

THIS PHOTOGRAPH

 

This was the stamps used by Henri on the back of his prints.

[stunsworth]

This was the stamps used by Henri on the back of his prints.

 

Yes, but that doesn't mean that the negative hadn't been cropped when producing his original print does it?

[delander †]

I'm well aware of many photographers' emphasis on printing the entire image. I personally find the technique more compelling on 8x10 contact prints by photographers like E. Weston. But, in general, the whole black border thing bores me.

 

However, once again, your post dances around my specific question. I have used one...and only one...photo to use in this discussion. It took me 4 posts just to have you...still very indirectly...clarify that you hold the le Gare image in lesser regard due to the crop. In my last post, I discussed what you think HCB should have done, given your purest views, and asked you to consider that he took the photo as intended, and that he had no other choice other than to not take it.

 

But, if you insist on broadening the discussion, then I suggest that in your purist world, some of the greatest photographs in history would have never been taken, or would have been diminished in regard.

 

Jeff

 

Jeff,

 

Apparently HCB could not do anything more than he did, in which case he got it right in camera. However I would have liked to have seen the full image and not a cropped image falsely represented as the full image.

 

Jeff

[peter_n]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Actually he didn't really get it right in the camera. If you look at a straight print of the full neg that is obvious. But as Steve mentioned above HCB's printer Pierre Gassman did an unbelievable job with the neg. I looked closely at the print from the Fondation HCB at MoMA last week and you can clearly see the OOF right edge of the railing on the print. But the rest of the print looks really good and I just can't understand why Gassman isn't as famous as HCB. He was a genius. The full print looks terrible from a technical perspective but the printer did an absolutely brilliant job with it.

 

You can see the full print in all its glory on p.87 of Scrapbook (Thames & Hudson, 2007). Opposite it on p.86 is the cropped print I saw last week and you can just see the railing in it too. HCB must have been OK with it.

[Jeff S]

Jeff,

 

Apparently HCB could not do anything more than he did, in which case he got it right in camera. However I would have liked to have seen the full image and not a cropped image falsely represented as the full image.

 

Jeff

 

Thanks.

 

Guess you're not a Walker Evans fan...or a Robert Frank fan...or a......(insert myriad other great photographers "falsely representing" - your term - their work).

 

Jeff

[delander †]

Thanks.

 

Guess you're not a Walker Evans fan...or a Robert Frank fan...or a......(insert myriad other great photographers "falsely representing" - your term - their work).

 

Jeff

 

Do they falsely represent their work by making out that the image is not cropped?

 

I think you have completely sidetracked what I am trying to say which I repeat again is that it is more skilful to see the photograph when taken than to crop it later at leisure - and that extra skill should be recognised.

 

Jeff

[nhabedi]

Don't forget that the Gare "decisive moment" was also set up

 

After having read several dozen books about HCB and even more articles and after visiting numerous HCB exhibitions, I cannot remember any single evidence that this shot was set up except your claim. In fact, there's a long essay from Peter Galassi of the MoMA about HCB's early works where he says that Gare St. Lazare and Cardinal Pacelli are the only shots that were cropped while the one from Mexico with the crossed arms and the shoes was the only one that was set up.

 

Besides, why would someone set up a shot and then photograph it through a whole in the wall?

[andybarton]

I am sure I have seen alternative versions of this shot at the Cartier Bresson exhibition in Bradford last year

 

Happy to withdraw my claim if someone can tell me I am mistaken

[Jeff S]

Do they falsely represent their work by making out that the image is not cropped?

 

I think you have completely sidetracked what I am trying to say which I repeat again is that it is more skilful to see the photograph when taken than to crop it later at leisure - and that extra skill should be recognised.

 

Jeff

 

Did they falsely represent their work? Of course not (although maybe you think otherwise). You're the one who said HCB did so...not me.

 

Countless other great and skilled photographers never deemed it necessary to show uncropped versions of all their work. If they did, museums and galleries would be full of black borders and/or disclaimers. No thank you.

 

As for your second paragraph, I understand you clearly...again. We just disagree. I happen to think that Evans, Frank, and countless others are no less skilled because they...or printers on their behalf...cropped some of their images. The same eye, vision and skill went into all of their work. They decided where to aim and photograph in the first place. And, in many cases, where to dodge and burn, tilt the easel, experiment with papers and coatings, and on and on. All of these decisions...and more...affected the result we eventually see. It's photography, not reality. It's all "false."

 

I'm done now.

 

Jeff

[stunsworth]

Countless other great and skilled photographers never deemed it necessary to show uncropped versions of all their work. If they did, museums and galleries would be full of black borders and/or disclaimers. No thank you.

 

Not to mention the fact that only large format users would ever have bought 10"x8" or 20"x16" photographic paper.

[nhabedi]

I am sure I have seen alternative versions of this shot at the Cartier Bresson exhibition in Bradford last year

 

Happy to withdraw my claim if someone can tell me I am mistaken

 

I just checked and it seems the Bradford exhibition showed HCB's "Scrapbook" which was also shown in other venues. I have the "Scrapbook" (ISBN 978-0-500-54333-7) and while it shows alternative versions of other well-known photos (e.g. the man with the glasses in the bullfight arena) it does not show alternative versions of the Gare St Lazare picture. It does show two alternative prints of the same negative, though, on pages 86 and 87.

[andybarton]

Understood.

 

Does the book include the entire scrapbook?

[giordano]

Besides, why would someone set up a shot and then photograph it through a whole in the wall?

 

If more than one shot was taken there would have been a very long wait between them while the ripples in the water subsided.

[andybarton]

Ok. I must have deamed it then. Ignore me.

[giordano]

I still can't understand why anyone with Jeff (Delander)'s knowledge of photography should think that making an irregular black border on a print amounts to a representation that the picture has not been cropped.

 

The mere existence of a black border can't do that, no more than the existence of clouds in a 19th century landscape represent that those clouds were on the original negative.* Nothing in a photograph, including the border, is necessarily what it seems.

 

So only some extrinsic factor can make the border not just an element in the print and its presentation but also an actual representation that "This print shows the whole area of the negative." For instance, did HC-B instruct his printer(s) to include the border on uncropped prints but not on cropped ones?

 

Any suggestions?

 

 

* For younger readers: in the early days, if you exposed for the landscape the sky was burnt out, and if you exposed to get the clouds the landscape was hopelessly underexposed. The solution was to strip in the clouds from another negative - either from another exposure of the same scene (just like HDR today) or, more often, from a collection of good cloudscapes.

[Guest]

There are older readers who used orange or red filters

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[giordano]

There are older readers who used orange or red filters

 

I was describing the real old days when photographic materials were only sensitive to the blue end of the spectrum. Orange filters were useless before orthochromatic emulsions were developed, while until panchromatic emulsions came along both negatives and prints were developed under a red safelight.