Jeanne-Claude, the wife and collaborator of Christo died recently and yesterday a memorial service was held at the Met in New York City. I learned that the two of them were born on the same day, June 13, 1935. They first met in 1958.

Jeanne-Claude & Christo, "The Gates", February 2005

I remember seeing Christo talk at the Carnegie Art Museum in Pittsburgh in about 1977 or 1978 at a screening of films about his work Running Fence and Valley Curtain. I was impressed by the energy, scale and sheer chutzpah of designing and producing a work that was 24 miles long. Running Fence was a fabric fence that started at the Pacific coastline in California and ran inland for 24 miles.

I have always admired that fact that Christo and Jeanne-Claude raised the money to produce their expensive and temporary projects on their own. In college I even contemplated doing my own Christo-like installation, dreaming of roping off the Arts Quad at Cornell. I made some tentative plans and even took photos of the area, but scheming is easier and cheaper than doing.

Jeanne-Claude was the silent partner, the wife behind the scenes. An article in the NY Times mentions that even though she generated ideas and worked on many projects with Christo, they only started to credit her name in 1994. It is curious that a woman who was an avant garde artist lived as a nameless collaborator in the quiet shadow of her more famous husband.

Since they were partners in their work it is difficult to assess what each of their contributions were. And since their work was as much the logistics and political maneuvering of gaining permission to take over large areas of public space, as it was the aesthetics of the final installation, it is difficult to judge their work in the same terms of say judging a painting or a photograph.

In February of 2005 I traveled to New York to visit their Central Park winter project, The Gates. The bright large scaled orange gates jumped out of the dreary gray winter landscape of Central Park, a magnet for visitors. One friend at the time commented that The Gates was a 1970s idea that was finally realized in 2005. While the sheer scale and number of gates was impressive along with their ability to draw people, at some level the piece had an emptiness.

The funniest and most telling commentary on The Gates was done by Stephen Colbert, then on the Daily Show and billed as their Senior Conceptual Art Correspondent.

“I used to think 21 million dollars could be used to achieve something noble, like building a hospital wing, but The Gates has forced me to reconceptualize what what 21 million dollars can be used for. In this case, like, redecorating a bike path,” deadpans Colbert.

In the April 19, 2010, issue of the New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl has a review of the Cartier-Bresson retrospective.

In the review he quotes Robert Frank, (the photographer known for his book The Americans) commenting on Cartier-Bresson, “He traveled all over the goddamned world, and you never felt that he was moved by something that was happening other than the beauty of it, or just the composition.”

This morning I have pondered this quote and looked at many images by Frank and Cartier-Bresson with the intent of pairing their images to show Cartier-Bresson’s strong composition and lack of compassion and Frank’s indifference to composition and his empathy with his subjects’ emotions. The reality of their work is that it is complicated.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, "Telavi, Georgia, Visitors from Kolkhozy to the 11th Century Alaverdi Monastery", 1972

Robert Frank, "Funeral—St. Helena, South Carolina", 1955

In comparing Cartier-Bresson’s photo of Georgians on a picnic at a monastery with Frank’s image of an African-American funeral I am struck by how strong the composition and arrangements of forms is in both images. Yes the placement of every element: the monastery in the distance, the rake of the car fender, the placing of each of the people, even the picnic blanket all fall into place, as if sketched by a painter instead of aligned by a photographer.

The funeral photo has its own pictorial structure with three figures receding in space. On the question of empathy, the picnickers appear a bit nervous and dwarfed by the landscape. While the foreground mourner is lost in his thoughts and to me almost seems to be playing a harmonica. Trying to determine who the most compassionate photographer presents one of the dilemmas of photography–how accurately does our reading of a photograph reflect the reality of the emotion state of the people in it.

Robert Frank, "Political Rally-Chicago", 1958

Henri Cartier-Bresson, "Boston", 1947

Another pair of Frank and Cartier-Bresson images of people lying in parks shows Cartier-Bresson’s focus on people arranged in the picture plane and Frank’s direct confrontation of a man lying shoeless on the ground. As to which photo displays its subjects’ emotions more strongly, I’m not really sure.

And consider this photograph of a shoeless New Yorker. Was it shot by Frank or Cartier-Bresson?

Henri Cartier-Bresson, "Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris", 1932

This is the first Cartier-Bresson photo that I ever remember seeing. The tension of the moment before the man’s foot hit the water, almost touching his reflection has stuck in my mental image bank. I remember in 7th or 8th grade art club, seeing it in a magazine for young art students. When I think back on it, this was the time in my life that I first started photographing on a regular basis.

A new retrospective of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photography has opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The show with over 300 photos will run until June 28, 2010. Last night I watched Charlie Rose interview three people connected to the show: Cartier-Bresson’s widow, Martine Franck; the curator of the MOMA show, Peter Galassi; and Agnès Sire, the director of the Fondation HCB.

Cartier-Bresson is a seminal photographer. His 1930s black & white images of “decisive moments” broke new ground in photography. Perhaps because of his training as a painter, composition is paramount in his photographs. Timing, too, is important.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, "Hyères, France", 1932

Contact Sheets

In the late 1980s I visited Burk Uzzle’s studio. Burk had worked at Magnum, the photo agency Cartier-Bresson co-founded. Burk told the story that when he first was hired at Magnum in the 1960s, he would go in off hours and look at Cartier-Bresson’s contact sheets. And apparently, from what Burk said, there were many many lousy photos on those contact sheets. In order to arrive at the stellar moment, lots of un-stellar moments were shot.

In the Charlie Rose interview, when asked about first meeting her future husband, Martine Franck, a successful photographer herself, told the story that when they first got together, Cartier-Bresson’s opening line was, ” Martine, I want to come and see your contact sheets.”

From a 2004 obituary: ”My contact sheets may be compared to the way you drive a nail in a plank,” he said. “First you give several light taps to build up a rhythm and align the nail with the wood. Then, much more quickly, and with as few strokes as possible, you hit the nail forcefully on the head and drive it in.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson, "Valencia, Spain", 1933

Henri Cartier-Bresson, "Srinagar, Kashmir", 1948

New Jersey State Taxation Building

Today, Tax Day, April 15 found me in the capital of New Jersey, Trenton, photographing an office building. As coincidence would have it, the state Taxation Building was nearby.

Down the street at the New Jersey State House, tea party protesters gathered to protest taxes.

I don’t know anyone who loves taxes, but as Ben Franklin said, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.”

Tea Party Protesters in Trenton, NJ

Protest at New Jersey State House.

Protest at New Jersey State House

The Penn Law Journal, an alumni magazine, wanted a cover shot featuring six graduates from the class of 2009. The group photograph was shot for the cover of the magazine. The article on these students also featured a photograph of each of them with their families. The families were only available on graduation and both the group shot and the photos with the families had to be shot on the same day.

Cover of Fall 2009 Issue of Penn Law Journal

The day of Commencement we were under a time constraint and in a crowded public space where we had to create the high production value group portrait. The group photo was scouted with the art director and planned prior to the event. The art director helped select and approve the best view that would show six people in black gowns in the ornate setting of the Academy of Music, where the graduation ceremony is held. Because there was an event before the Law School graduation, our time to set up and shoot was limited.

Coordinating with each of the students and their families, we set times and locations to meet them.

Taking into account everyone’s schedules and also allowing time for each setting, locations were chosen at the Law School and near the Academy of Music.

The settings switch from indoor to outdoor and because they were shot during different times of the day, a range of visual variety was possible.

It is worth noting that the Law Journal’s piece succeeds in being a testament to the diversity of students that the school attracts. Each of the family groups is so different. While at different stages of their life’s journey, all of these graduates are commencing their careers at the same time.

To read more about these students see the online version of the Fall 2009 issue of Penn Law Alumni Journal.