Decisive Moment

Hirundo left a comment on my blip yesterday recommending a visit to the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition at the Courthauld in Somerset House being as I was in that London. There was sufficient time between an excellent conference at the Royal Society of Medicine and the train home for me to dash through the rush hour and have a mooch around.

The exhibition is essentially about 10 of his photos all mono (he didn't care much for colour) and about 100 others more contemporary and in colour clearly influenced by his work.
I gather his thing was decisive moment, a split second never to be repeated but with strong adherence to traditional compositional rules. It's basically everyday people and places and expressions or movements that aren't set up, but when you look carefully really strong compositional lines and themes. I could have dwelled on any of them for a long time, a real sense of story and moment which invites you in as more than an observer.
It's on for a few months more, if you're in town, it's 4 minutes from embankment and 4 minutes from Covent Garden Market and its free, you won't regret it. Thanks for the heads up Hirundo.

Photo was in the courtyard at Somerset House where it's apparently Christmas, but given its blipability I didn't do my usual grump thing and embraced the moment photographically. Made mono though in defference to the great man and because despite my gratitude to the blip gods green trees and red baubles are not allowed in my life until the week before Christmas Day.

PS, all that sounds a bit pretentious until you know that before last night I thought Cartier-Bresson was a very expensive watch brand and also before I spoke to one of the museum people who explained it all to me, and I'm at that age when all new knowledge is only permitted in the memory if it displaces something else, and what it displaces is a form of Russian Roulette