Henri Cartier-Bresson: the Tao of Photography, the Way of the Camera

‘Take pictures of something you like.’ Tappei’s father gave a tip to him when playing with his dad’s professional (DSLR) camera.

Tappei took a lot of pictures of Miiko, his classmate. He blushed. The pictures came out good.

I got my first photography tip from Eriko Ono’s manga Kocchi Muite! Miiko. From then on, my education was focused on the practical aspects of photography.

Aperture speed, focal length, ISO (ASA), bokeh, the rule of third. How to take pictures of sunset/sunrise and silhouette, panning, light work on slow shutter speed, flowing water droplets on high shutter speed, macro.

I wanted (and still want to) make photographs like the ones I saw on my dad’s foreign magazines, the ones with yellow frame covers (I assumed they were about geography; I couldn’t read the articles because they are in English, but the National Geographic is much more exciting than my Orde Baru (New Order, Indonesia’s militarist dictatorship regime 1965–1998) curriculum geography textbooks). Pictures of alien people and places. Portraits of subjects in their natural state and environment.

Participated in photo hunts (I didn’t know yet that they are the worst way to practice photography, they are as predatory as the term suggests). Photographed beggars and destitutes (thought that as human interests genre is all about). Editing with selective colour (because I could not compose well to direct the viewer’s attention).

I gave up playing with photography for a while. But I always know there are images I want to make when I see something that catches my interest. My dominant sense is visual. Paintings, drawings, writings, photography, cinema. I am always drawn to them compared to auditory art forms. I can imagine the thought process of visual artists. I am clueless how musicians make music in their head despite the fact that I do enjoy music.

I dabbled with filmmaking, produced and written indie short films and an official profile introduction of my law school. I handled the camera myself. Motion picture composing helped me understand still pictures, and vice versa.

My interest in photography was revived when I started travelling. I became a tourist with a camera (in my early days of travel, I would be offended with such a term — insisted on being called a ‘traveller’). My first independent trip was to Karimun Jawa, financed by my first bonus in my private practice career.

The pictures I made were good enough, much better than my pre-traveller life. While the big moments of travel are obvious subjects and objects in photography, I soon realised that the banal moments can be too. Our time waiting on the dock, being seasick onboard of a PELNI (state ferry company) vessel, chartering angkot (minibus) for land transport, the economy class car of pre-corporate reform KAI (state railway company) train from Senen to Semarang.

Life in Jakarta has its banal moments (lots of them). But the stark inequality is what makes the polar opposite of the classes an interesting subject matter. Class voyeurism.

The posh coffee shops brewing and serving at the same price of artisan coffee shops in London (1/15 is even more expensive than Monmouth). The fancy bars and restaurants where the divide between the (rich) locals and the expats are temporarily lifted. High end shopping malls with designer boutiques and luxury cars sales rooms.

Contra with kids shitting in the gutter. Barefooted scavengers and daily construction workers. Meatballs and curry stalls with questionable meat sources — ‘gultik’ can mean ‘gule tikungan’ (curry stall at the street corner) or ‘gule tikus’ (rat meat curry) — spiked with MSG. Street kids sniffling glue and transwomen busking/offering sex services under the bridges.

Just like any city, the middle class is the most banal subject. But monocultural Jakarta, with its grey dusty streets; South East Asian design taste of dead colours composition; tropical humidity subduing the sunlight hues; and religious orthodoxy, makes individual expression spectrum limited.

But there is one photographer who can make Jakarta’s middle class interesting: Erik Prasetya. He could see that the sterile shopping malls frequented by the middle-class were (or still are?) training grounds for civilised interactions. In these private spaces open to the public on a commercial basis, prohibitions on squatting; urinating; spitting; and catcalling are enforced.

Erik is a lecturer at IKJ (the Jakarta Art Institute). He held a street photography course at Salihara, an art cooperative — a cultural oasis — in Pasar Minggu.

It was the first time I heard about that term, ‘street photography’. We had seminars every weekend. The other students are already familiar with big names: Robert Frank, Capa, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. I was ignorant, but it was an advantage — I was not biased with their fame. I could judge them by their art.

Cartier-Bresson to street photography is like Tezuka to manga. His most famous photograph, the ‘Jumping Man’, is hailed as the archetype of street photography: banal juxtaposed moments with aesthetics. (It was also my first time I heard of the word ‘juxtaposition’)

But I was not impressed. I prefer his other works; I learned later that it was the only Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photograph which was cropped. His only exception to no cropping rule.

We spent the course with discussions and practice. Erik told us that street photography is a genre. Like books, genres are helpful only to guide you what they are not.

Erik is the only photographer who writes his philosophy. ‘Estetika Banal’ (banal aesthetics) he termed it. The difference between an artist and a craftsman is philosophy. Salihara street photography course is the only photography course in Jakarta which mandates reading lists: Barthes’ Camera Lucida and Sontag’s On Photography.

The practice lessons, for me, were not as enjoyable as the ‘theoretical’ discussions. There was so much pressure to make ’street photographs’ — fulfilling the checklist of ‘banal’; ‘juxtaposition’; and ‘aesthetics’. The first two elements are easy to find in Jakarta, but not the last.

I felt like someone who only talks, not walks the walk. Street photography can be pretentious. Like surrealist or abstract paintings, the thin line between art and blobs of random strokes is obscure. We often mistake ‘simple’ as ‘easy’. Street photography pursues simplicity — to see and capture that Barthesian ‘puncture’ in daily lives.

The labelling made me feel constrained. I decided to forget about making street photography as my genre. I’d stick to photographing anything that interests me. If anyone asks what my genre is, I’d simply say ‘travel photography’ because I enjoy photography the most when travelling.

The pandemic prevents me from travelling. Ipso facto, my photography took the backseat again in my life. One day, my adoptive sibling Adhitio Noviello, a London based photographer, incepted the idea of ‘photography as therapy’ through his Instagram feeds. He revisits analogue photography as a way to slow down.

Bought a Leica M3, read books about photography.

There are two types of photographer: hunters and sculptors. Street and travel photographers are hunters. Salon, fashion, studio photographers are sculptors.

William Mortensen was a salon photographer. Dubbed the Anti-Christ of straight photography. He instructed on ‘themes’ and ‘pictorial imperatives’, elements which can be described and constructed objectively to make good pictures.

Then there is Nicoline Patricia, a fashion photographer. A Lightroom ambassador. I love her blog. Her travel photography is as beautiful as her salon photography. A balance between preparation and candidness.

I know I am a hunter. But I am not too dedicated to photography. I don’t make money out of photography, never won any competition, got few likes on social media. I don’t even use Lightroom, just Photos. I only believe in fixed lenses. To be honest, I am more interested in the subject matters — that’s why I am photographing them (or reading, writing, or talking about them).

I was reluctant to call myself a photographer.

I took Greg Williams’ candid photography course. The sales pitch was simple: take nice pictures of your friends and loved ones with any camera. Greg is a professional, but he admits he can work only with subjects he like. The course gave me the permission to just enjoy photography — whether I am a photographer or a photography enthusiast doesn’t really matter.

Then I found the book Interviews and Conversations (1951–1998). HCB’s own words. The 20th century’s greatest photographer said:

‘Photography is not essential for me.’

HCB was passionate about life. He was not just a photographer. He was also a trained painter. Photography was just one of his media to observe, to pay attention. His passion for life was, is, reflected not just by his photographs. He was a man of action, like Orwell and Hemingway. He was an Occidental Oriental. A quintessential French transnational.

He lived in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Mexico. He has been a hunter, a military man serving in the French Air Force during World War II, an Indonesian revolutionary (his first wife, Ratna Mohini, was an Indonesian dancer and fellow Indonesian revolution activist — they corresponded in Malay to avoid censorship when HCB was a POW in Nazi German camps).

He used Leica M3 with Elmar 50mm f3.5 collapsible lens. Loaded with Ilford HP3 black and white film. Most of the time, he fixed his shutter speed at 1/100. He used the same kits for the rest of his life — because it feels like an extension to his eyes. He did not develop the films himself. He was focused on making the photographs.

Photography to HCB is the art of seeing.

When asked what books a photographer should read, he mentioned Herrigel’s Zen in the Art of Archery and Proust’s In Search for a Lost Time. Nothing technical. He did not write much about photography because he wanted to do it; he did not want to be an art critic.

When I read Zen, I understood what he meant when he said photography is not essential. A master archer knows that the bow itself is not the Way of the Bow. The bow, the camera, the canvas, are never the art. The art is also not the purpose. Art supports life. This is the artless art.

The father of street photography did not define himself as a ‘street photographer’ (he was a surrealist, but to be commercially accepted called himself a ‘photojournalist’). His business acumen founded the Magnum cooperative, which allows the photographers to have full creative control unburdened by business administration while adhering to high ethical standards. The grandmaster knew that we are never just one name.

The maestro was a purist. He never liked automatic cameras. Like Barthes, he didn’t believe in colour photographs as art; that video recording will only be useful as documentation.

Opinions, no matter how wise and sophisticated they came from, are bound to be debunked. The ‘P’ mode is capable of making art — even smartphone cameras. Kimura Ihei and Joel Meyerowitz rebelled with colour films.However, HCB’s philosophy stood the test of time. He distilled them in a haiku-like writing:

‘For me, the camera is a sketch-book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to give meaning to the world, one must feel involved in what one singles out through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, sensitivity, a discipline of mind and a sense of geometry.

It is through economy of means and above all by forgetting one-self that one arrives at simplicity of expression.

To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converse to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes great physical and intellectual joy.

For me photography is to place head heart and eye along the same line of sight — it is a way of life.’

By the Old Master’s words, I have the blessing to call myself a photographer. My photographs may not be good enough, but if I find solace and meaning in photography, it should be enough.

This is the Tao of Photography, the Way of the Camera.