Brief
No photos required. Produce a creative response of about 300 words to Cartier-Bresson’s ‘Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare’.
Response
Memory is funny.
When we consider an event from our past, we remember the things that stood out. Those things that stood out. Those things that were so vivid that they etched themselves in out memory. Something we saw, a sound we heard, a small (petrichor, the smell after a rainstorm), the taste or touch of something.
Other things, less memorable things, we forget, or they fade into the background.
Henri Cartier-Bresson’s ‘Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare’ is like a memory.
If you know the image, try and picture it now. What do you see?
Do you see the figures? How many do you see? The image is most well-known because of the running figure, their feet off the ground at the moment the image froze them forever in time.
Did you picture the person in the background, the railings, the bike, the buildings?
Did you picture them reflected in the water lying on the ground? Did you? Are you sure that they are all reflected? Maybe you need to take another look at the photograph. Just to refresh your memory.
The running figure, the man, the railings, the bike. All these are reflected in the water. The buildings are missing though. Like they had somehow ben forgotten or faded with the passage of time.
Even some of the items in the foreground are not reflected. Almost like they were of no real importance.
But they were. The curved pieces of metal were important to the person who made them. Their time and energy went into making them. The labourers who spent days and weeks raising the buildings, the clockmaker who fashioned the clock at the top of one of the buildings, these things were important to them because they were the fruits of their labours.
The camera captures what it sees, it is a passionless observer of events. One that can show us that what we think we remember is not necessary the case.
Memory is funny.
Link to image at MoMa
Jenna Powell - Expressing Your Vision 