The decisive moment

New York: Simon & Schuster, New York, 1952. FIRST EDITION. With 126 photographic illustrations. Publisher’s decorated cloth designed by Cartier-Bresson, and in the original dust jacket. Laid in is the separate leaflet (4to., 12 pp.) containing the captions to the photographs in English. A fine copy. First edition of this landmark work in the history of photography. This is the American issue, though printed in France in collaboration with Éditions Verve. Though many people assume that his “decisive moment” is an ephemeral and spontaneous image representing a snap in time, Cartier-Bresson felt quite differently; his moment is all about composition and how a photograph can communicate to the observer:

“If a photograph is to communicate its subject in all its intensity, the relationship of form must be rigorously established. Photography implies the recognition of a rhythm in the world of real things. What the eye does is to find and focus on the particular subject within the mass of reality… In a photograph, composition is the result of a simultaneous coalition, the organic coordination of elements seen by the eye. One does not add composition as though it were an afterthought superimposed on the basic subject material, since it is impossible to separate content from form. Composition must have its own inevitability about it. But inside movement there is one moment at which the elements in motion are in balance. Photography must seize upon this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it.”

Parr/Badger I, pp. 208-209; Roth, pp. 134-135; Open Book, pp. 154-155.