Truman Capote, 1947, by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Photo via this brilliant essay:
Taking a photograph, [HCB] wrote, “is putting one’s head, one’s eye and one’s heart on the same axis.” When we look at his portraits, that head-eye-heart relationship is more evident.
Cartier-Bresson famously compared himself to a Zen archer. The accuracy of that comparison is truly apparent to those familiar with Eugen Herrigel’s short monograph Zen in the Art of Archery. Although the book of that title wasn’t published until 1948—after the end of World War II—the ideas contained in it were first published in a German magazine as an essay in 1936—as the social situation in Europe began to drift back towards war. HCB didn’t read it until June 6, 1944—the same day, coincidentally, the Allied Forces landed in Normandy and began the liberation of Europe. At the time he was given a copy of the essay, HCB was an escaped POW hiding in Paris. After he recovered from the shock of the good news about the Allied invasion, he read the essay—and received an almost equally profound shock. Herrigel’s essay was to have a lasting effect on Cartier-Bresson and his work.
Now I really want to read Zen in the Art of Archery, since I keep hearing it’s such a great metaphor for photography.
