The indecisive moment: How chasing the moment can lead you astray

I’m going to cut to the chase, since I think everyone knows the history behind Henri Cartier-Bresson and his seminal work, The Decisive Moment. His timing and his ability to capture scenes on the fly is legendary. In fact, the actual title of the book in French references just that – Images on the Fly.

The decisive moment is myth. This isn’t to say that some moments aren’t more interesting than others. And it’s not to say that some moments aren’t easier to work with. These things I don’t doubt. After all, there’s a reason you see 30 people pull out their point-and-shoots at the exact same time at a wedding. But are you really dying to be person number 31? It’s an uninteresting discussion to ask whether the moment matters. Everyone knows timing makes a difference. The real question is how the moment contributes to the overall meaning of a photo.

The problem with the decisive moment is that it leads as many people astray as it offers guidance. The idea of the decisive moment pushes people to look for moments so pregnant with meaning that they get a free ride on it with only minimal consideration of subject matter, framing, and message. This undermines the very power of photography. It is a medium of ideas, and ideas are fluid and changing. Great photographers find ways to inject meaning into moments, not the other way around. In fact, it is often the ambiguity of a moment that opens it up to creative exploration. Moments are nothing, if not pliable.

Cartier-Bresson defines the decisive moment as “the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression.”

 

 

The picture above is undoubtedly Cartier-Bresson’s most cited example of the decisive moment. It is about suspension, both literal and figuratively, and the timing is just right. But with different timing, it could just as easily be about splashing. Or jumping. Or powerful jumping. Or clumsy jumping. There are any number of moments that could have been decisive, depending on what he wanted the picture to convey. And that’s the real problem. Most people look to the decisive moment as something that inheres in the real world. As if there were certain preordained moments of greater value. But at its best, the decisive moment isn’t a hunt for something outside. It’s a search for something inside. It is introspection.

The following two images from Martin Parr’s treatise on luxury exemplify constructed moments, where timing was secondary to the images’ meaning. Their strength comes from their figurative value and a wry sense of humor. In the first image, the careful framing brings emphasis to the stain, the body, and the dress material, while filling out the story with the people in the background. It is a hot sweaty day of misery in the sun by a slovenly individual under the guise of a presumed sophistication. It is a perfect damnation of luxury. In the second, his razor sharp assessment hits the nail on the head. He quickly identifies the value of the woman’s expression and the ridiculous tenor of the scene. With child in tow as graceless skiers abound, she stands above it all. The idyllic snow-capped mountains finish things out nicely. It is exactly because the timing lacks specific meaning that Parr can imbue these images with such distinct statements and moods. Their value comes almost entirely through his choice of composition and subject.

 

 

Can we refine the decisive moment? Is it possible that each concept in each situation has its own decisive moment? That the moment isn’t so much about meaning as it is about a certain confluence of events coming together to allow for meaning? Cartier-Bresson doesn’t exclude this. This interpretation would allow that the significance of an event is purely the compositional alignment. Or even that the significance is that it lacks significance altogether. This approach may salvage the decisive moment, but it’s a case of cutting off the nose to spite the face, leaving us with a definition so broad and vague that it gives us little to latch on to.

Instead, it moves us towards an infinitely regressive circle of increasingly miniscule considerations, as each affects the outcome and psychology of a picture such that it becomes harder and harder to identify anything as decisive at all. That’s not guidance. That’s neurosis. Worse yet, not only can each individual photographer have a different concept, but he can easily have multiple concepts in mind, making concepts as varied as moments. Now, every moment has a concept and every concept has a moment. This is distinctly indecisive.

In Phillip Toledano’s entertaining and touching essay, The Reluctant Father, he chronicles his emotional transition as his newborn child grows up. At first, he found his baby foreign and unappealing. In the first image, if it’s about a decisive moment, it is more the fact that he chose to shoot the moment at all than any particularly decisive quality about the timing. He injects levity and surprise into the picture through the use of the wide angle lens, the tight framing, and the decision to focus on the spit up. In fact, it is these three decisions that are responsible for the humor and create the value of the timing behind the image. The moment on its own provides significantly less insight. The ensuing image illustrates good timing, but its effect still comes from the fact that it’s neither obvious nor typical.

 

 

A photographer’s decision to select a moment is immensely personal. The combination of moments and composition has infinite permutations, and the best photographers play with that fact. Though a photographer may or may not recognize a certain moment as definitive, it is an all-too-common take away that pictures with decisive moments define the types of moments we want to capture, encouraging cliché and limiting exploration. The better take away comes from observing that their effectiveness lies in showing the unexpected with clarity and conviction. No mean feat, given that the unexpected is always foreign to the first time viewer, making it difficult to interpret. Photography is a balance of all elements, and it is as much the acts of construction and symbolic recognition that reveal an author’s intention, as it is the decision to capture a specific moment.

Is there room for the decisive moment? Within a sufficiently narrow scope, I believe there is. But not where the it diminishes the value of other methods of communication in photography. Still, I do believe there are moments that transcend logical description. Some things in some periods just resonate with our hearts and minds. Here’s a final shot from Toledano’s piece. It’s not just a bubble in the air. It’s the wonder of childhood, floating, suspended, and free. We understand that he has grown to see beyond the literal confines of fatherhood at this point. Shot with a plain lens and basic composition – in fact, aided by these – it works for the simple beauty of the timing. So maybe there’s some hope left. But if you’re going all in based on the moment, make sure it goes beyond the predictable. Make it magic.