Masters of their Art

If I had to choose three photographers that have influenced me over the years I’d name Garry Winogrand, Henri Cartier Bresson and Joel Meyerowitz.

Joel Meyerowitz was part of a movement of street photographers who documented everyday life on the streets of New York City in what many call the golden age of street photography. Even today, Joel’s ‘field photographs’ influence me a great deal.

His images were such that your eye could come into the picture anywhere on the scene, meander through the photograph and pick out detail upon detail. His use of wide angle lenses to include and describe ‘more’ within the frame were put to spectacular effect on the streets of New York in the late 1960s and through the 1970s.

Later, he would pioneer the use of colour in modern art photography. He’s still alive and producing work to this day. You can see the power of his documentary photography in his post 9-11 book ‘Aftermath’ which documented the story behind the clear-up at Ground Zero.

Henri Cartier Bresson was the first photographer to show me and many others, just what was possible within the confines of a photograph. His images are dreamlike moments snapped and preserved forever on film. Cartier Bresson had the eye of a mathematician. He was a photographic genius and is perhaps the most famous photographer of all time. Sadly he died in 2004.

Cornell Capa wrote this about him in the late 1980s:

“Henri Cartier Bresson has long been considered to be among the world’s most important photojournalists. His aesthetic of the ‘decisive moment’ – the revelatory instant – and his aversion to arranged photographs and contrived settings have influenced photographers since the 1930s.”

Last year I travelled to Paris and visited the HCB Foundation in Montparnasse. It’s hard not to stand in admiration of Henri’s little Leica M3 camera sitting displayed in the glass cabinet up on the upper floor. To think of what he achieved with just his eye and that little manual camera is so inspiring. In this day and age of modern cameras that’s a revelation.

Garry Winogrand was another New York ‘street photographer’ known for his portrayal of American life in the early 1960s. He roamed the streets of New York with his 35mm Leica camera rapidly taking photographs using a prefocused wide angle lens. His pictures frequently appeared as if they were driven by the energy of the events he was witnessing. Winogrand once stated that “a photograph has the illusion of being a literal description of how the camera ‘saw’ a piece of time and space.” How about that?

Tod Papageorge said this about Garry’s pictures in 1974:

“If they appear casual it is because they were meant to. Their mastery resides in just such an appearance.”

Fine words.

Here are some wedding images of my own that I know have been directly inspired by these three great photographers.

Can you tell which?