THE PICTURE PRESS
When Henri Cartier-Bresson introduced the phrase “the decisive moment,”
he was referring to a precisely timed, unrepeatable, once-in-a-lifetime
image that encapsulates a universal human experience. Like any
photojournalist, he was intent on conveying truths, rendering a moment
with all the verisimilitude and authenticity photography can muster.
Formally, these pictures have a compositional unity, an atmosphere of
balance and harmony, in which the dissonant aspects of everyday life are
pictorially made whole. Iconic news images often seem so perfectly
composed and “of the moment” that they appear to have been staged.
Before the era of television and online streaming, photojournalists created
images for the printed page. Illustrated magazines provided current
information about world events, fashion, finance and culture. The notion
that a single image could capture the complexity of modern life was the
mission of the working photojournalist. As quaint and extraordinary as this
may now seem, photographers successfully defined moments in historic
time, which continue to resonate within our collective imagination. But, in
the new millennium, with its reliance on speed and virtual imagery, single
photographs no longer suffice. Indeed, the iconic news photograph has
been supplanted by short videos, edited assemblages of sound and image,
which describe the unique nature of live experience today.
