Presentation Week 11: Kertesz and Cartier-Bresson versus Smith and Salgado

Henri Cartier is known as the father of modern photojournalism and considered a master of candid photography. Cartier-Bresson famously captured pivotal moments of the 20th. He was a French photographer who was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography. He helped develop the "street photography" or "real life reportage" style that has influenced many generations of photographers who followed and this is one of his photographs.

'We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory.'-Henri Cartier

André Kertész is one of the most renowned photographers of the 20th century; he was a quiet but important influence on the coming of age of photojournalism and the art of photography. He also discovered and demonstrated the special aesthetic of the small camera.

Andre Kertesz - Broken Plate - 1929. PORTLAND, MAINE.

Eugene Smith was perhaps the photographer who tried most heroically to make the magazine photo story meet the standards of coherence, intensity, and personal accountability that one expects of a work of art. He was an unquestioned leader of the photo story experiment. Smith was fanatically dedicated to his mission as a photographer so he was a figure universally admired as an artist.

W. Eugene Smith took this picture of a wounded soldier in Okinawa in 1945.

Sebastião Salgado is a Brazilian photographer and he is one of the most respected photojournalists working today. He has dedicated himself to chronicling the lives of the world’s dispossessed.   

Sebastião Salgado
Gourma-Rharous
Mali, 1985

1.What are the main differences and similarities?

All of them are capturing the truth in their eyes and sending the viewers their own message. The difference between the two different types of photographers is that Andre Kertesz and Henri Cartier are both “invisible” while taking photos, they both try to stay low while they’re shooting, that way their presence will not influence what they were photographing. They also believed that to capture the right photo you had to use your intuition and that everything had its right moment. Whereas Eugene Smith and Sebastiao Salgado are “visible”. They alert their shooting subject and developing a close relation with them. They believe that you must be a visible photographer and that the best photos came from interacting with your subjects. We can also define them as one side is shooting a truth image and the other side as fake image or far from truth image. So the visibility of these photographers is one of the differences but they both still capture real life scenes of people , places, events or subjects.

2.What has been the impact of digital photography on journalism?

Every photographer has his or her own different techniques of shooting the truth. journalism is a way to report and talk about events, issues and trends to a audience I would think the better journalism approach in this scenario would be as the photographer the pictures they take have a difference between objects and still life from a photographers point of view, how they emphasize and portray their photos to the viewer.

By  Natasha Koo

       Danielle Hall

       Nicole