Photography and Time

Photography and time: decoding the decisive moment
Photographys relationship to time has been amongst the more complex areas of debate within recent photographic theory. Discuss how the notion of the photograph as a decisive moment might be reexamined in the light of Thierry de Duves reworking of Roland Barthess ideas and Peter Wollens comments in his essay Fire and Ice.
Rich Cutler

MA Historical & Critical Studies: Contemporary Debates & Research Methodologies AGM61
MA Photography: University of Brighton January 2012
Decoding the decisive moment
Photography and time: decoding the decisive moment

I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strungup and ready to pounce, determined to trap life to preserve life in the act of living. I craved to seize, in the confines of one single photograph, the whole essence of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.
CartierBresson, The Decisive Moment, 19521
Introduction
The decisive moment is a phrase that is associated with the photographer Henri Cartier Bresson and his style of imagemaking, after the title of his 1952 book The Decisive Moment.2 More than a half century after its coining, the phrase is still widely used, familiar to every photographer (Googling the decisive moment plus photograph gives over 2 million results). This essay will examine the photographic decisive moment, concentrating principally on its relationship with time and space, in terms of the notions introduced in two critical discourses by Thierry de Duve3 and Peter Wollen.4 To discuss the decisive moment cogently, we first need to understand precisely what it is. Similarly, before examining the decisive moment from the perspectives of de Duve and
1 2
CartierBresson, H. (1952) The Decisive Moment. Simon and Schuster, New York, p. 2. CartierBressons book was translated from French into English by the publisher, and the decisive moment inadequately captures the meaning of the expression images la sauvette literally images on the run, with an implication of furtiveness. The French phrase evokes CartierBressons preference for candid photography, unlike the English translation. De Duve, T. (1978) Time exposure and the snapshot: the photograph as paradox. October 5: 113 125. Wollen, p. (1984) Fire and ice. Photographies 4: 118120.
Photography and time
Wollen, we need to clarify their deliberations on time and photography, starting with an exploration of the basic nature of the photograph in particular, its connection with reality and time.
The decisive moment

When the shutter of a camera clicks, we create a photograph: time sliced out of an event and transmuted into a picture. What makes that picture a decisive moment? It is commonly taken to be a crucial moment in time around which an event unfurls, as a quick web search will prove a typical definition being:5
the fleeting moment when the apex of the occurring action coincides with the other graphic elements within the frame to create the best possible composition.
This apex is the peripeteia of literature,6 the turning point in a narrative;7 it is when the girl kisses the boy. Writing can recount an event in its entirety, but a picture has only one frame, and illustrating an instant other than the crux of an event may communicate more clearly to the viewer what is happening. Let us return to our amorous couple would a picture of them a moment before the kiss, eyes locked on each other, lips parted, not quite touching, tell us more about their passion than the kiss itself? Or maybe the moment after, longing and desperation apparent as they part? In painting, this is Diderots instant,8 Lessings pregnant moment.9 Roland Barthes, the cultural theorist, called this moment
DuChemin, P. (2011) Photographically Speaking: A Deeper Look at Creating Stronger Images. New Riders, Berkeley, CA, p. 85. Bruner, S.B. (2002) Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 5. A classic example of peripeteia is the moment Little Red Riding Hood coming face to face with the wolf dressed as her grandmother. The narrative is central to this essay. As a storyteller, the photographers role is to enable the viewer of a photograph to construct an event whether fictive or nonfictive from a narrative, and to understand the relationship between the event, the story and the issue. Visual context is thus crucial: what is left out of the frame, what is kept in, and the relationship between objects. Clark, A.H. (2008) Diderots Part. Ashgate, Aldershot, p. 114. Lessing, G.E. (1853). Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (trans. E.C. Beasley). Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, London, pp. 102, 132. Original publication in German: Lessing, G.E. (1766) Laokoon: oder ber die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie Mit beylufigen Erluterungen verschiedener Punkte der alten Kunstgeschichte. Voss, Berlin.
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the hieroglyph10 a picture with imbued meaning. It is a moment chosen so that what has already taken place, and what is about to follow, can be most easily gathered,11 and we can see the present, the past, and the future.12

Figure 1. Orpheus and Eurydice (Rubens, 163637)
There is a tale in Greek mythology about the musician Orpheus, who was permitted to take his wife Eurydice back from death and the underworld on one condition: that he walk before her and never look back until reaching the world of the living. But he looked back Rubens paints this myth not at the instant when Orpheus turns his head and Eurydice returns to death the peripeteia but before (Figure 1). Rubenss avoidance of the

10 Barthes, R. (1974) Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein. In: Image, Music, Text. Fontana Press, London,
p. 73. Original publication in French: Barthes, R. (1973) Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein. Revue dEsthtique 26: 185191.
11 Lessing, G.E. (1853). Op. cit., p. 102. 12 Barthes, R. (1974) Op. cit., p. 73.
peripeteia imbues the painting with drama and increases the sense of narrative: we see Orpheus and Eurydice leaving Hades and Persephone, but he is grimfaced, struggling to keep his eyes off his wife, and foreboding overwhelms us; in our imagination we embark with him on his journey towards the light, pitying the couple as we anticipate their tragedy.13 In photography, this instant is Eisenstadts storytelling moment,14 CartierBressons decisive moment. How did CartierBresson the originator of the phrase articulate the decisive moment? He defined his style of photography very specifically in The Decisive Moment:15
the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.
With its emphasis on depicting the significance of an event, this echoes Lessings pregnant moment in painting. But there is a difference: CartierBresson explicitly mentions composition; Lessing does not do so in the Laocoon, but composition is implied (as a natural part of painting). CartierBresson is correct to be explicit, acknowledging the difference in how paintings and photographs are made, and the latters capacity for automaticity (reproduction by machine, rather than creation by man). So, the decisive moment according to CartierBresson is a confluence of both space (form resulting in a picture) and time (an event creating a narrative). This is clear from his

13 An
interesting evidencebased experiment investigating the psychological reality of Lessings Laocoon presented participants with a set of pictures (including paintings and photographs) showing a pregnant moment, and observers (all without formal training in visual art) were asked to spontaneously describe the images (unfamiliar to the observers, and removed from their original contexts). The findings support Lessings contention that the depiction of a pregnant moment results in the viewer translating a picture into a complex narrative. The narratives were temporal, and included exposition, complication and resolution, and were strongly correlated with the narrative elements in the pictures. See: Shen, Y. and Biberman, E. (2010) A story told by a picture. Image and Narrative 11(2): 177197. Britannica Online Alfred Eisenstaedt, www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/ 181526/AlfredEisenstaedt [accessed 16/1/2012].
14 Encyclopaedia
15 CartierBresson, H. (1952) Op. cit., p. 12.
definition above, and his specific use of the term picturestory in The Decisive Moment for an image that foregrounds both composition (space) and content (time):16
Sometimes there is one unique picture whose composition possesses such vigor and richness, and whose content so radiates outward from it, that this single picture is a whole story in itself.

Figure 2. Siphnos, Greece (H. Cartier-Bresson, 1961)
An examination of CartierBressons photographs shows that many contain the spacetime characteristic of his decisive moment. Consider, for example, Figure 2. Compositionally, the photograph excels the echoing of rectangles, the balance between light and shade, the shadow mirroring the girls posture, the girl perfectly placed; a consummate visual climax. But it also depicts an event there is a narrative, a past and future we cannot know: Where has the girl run from? Where is she going? Why is she running? And Cartier Bresson has stopped the event at a moment that compels us: the girl is in midflight, and we are just in time to glimpse her before she disappears around a corner. The intersection of time and space combined in a sublime dramatic climax.

However, we have omitted a crucial element from CartierBressons definition that the event associated with the decisive moment should be a spontaneous encounter, unaffected by the photographer: Manufactured or staged photography does not concern me, he wrote17 (Figure 3). This criterion is unique to photography, and is intimately bound to the direct creation of the photograph by reality, unlike other pictures: you can create a painting from memory but not a photograph.

Figure 3. A pregnant moment but not a decisive moment: Gregory Crewdson stages his photographs using actors (untitled, G. Crewdson, 1998)

17 CartierBresson, H. (1999) The Minds Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers. Aperture,
New York, p. 15.
Eisenstadt, like CartierBresson, was a documentary photographer, and he implied that his storytelling moment too should be candid, saying his aim was to find and catch the storytelling moment.18 Others, for example Szarkowski,19 construe the decisive moment differently, considering it not to be the dramatic zenith of an event but a visual climax when form and pattern cohere to achieve balance, clarity and order: The result is not a story but a picture.20 Roberts21 holds a similar view: for him, the decisive moment does not represent the imagined moment of temporal intensity [but] the moment when the internal elements of an observed scene appear, subjectively, to cohere pictorially. For them, CartierBresson is treating the photograph like a painting, his highly aestheticised images creating a fictive narrative that severs, or at least warps, the photographs connection with reality: the photograph no longer revolves around the actual event and truth but around Cartier Bresson. There is validity to this viewpoint, but, when we return to the decisive moment later in this essay, we will hold to its definition as simply that instant during an unstaged event when the elements in the scene form a composition that conveys the significance of the event, and consider the resulting photograph to be have twin aspects: eventlike and picturelike. As a coda to this section, it should be noted that although we associate the decisive moment with motion (Figure 4, left), movement in an event is not always overt (Figure 4, right). In the righthand photograph, the elderly woman glancing at the girl is an event, albeit an introspective one and a narrative spools off as with any other event: Do they know each other? Is age mourning lost youth? The generation gap

18 Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Alfred Eisenstaedt. Op. cit. 19 Szarkowski, J. (1966) The Photographers Eye. Museum of Modern Art, New York, pp. 10, 100. 20 Ibid., p. 10. It is of note that Szarkowski held the conviction that photography as a medium was
poor at storytelling: photography has never been successful at narrative (ibid., p. 9).
21 Roberts,
J. (2009) Photography after the photograph: event, archive, and the nonsymbolic. Oxford Art Journal 32(2): 281.

Figure 4. (L) Place de lEurope, Paris, 1932. (R) Brasserie Lipp, Paris, 1969. (H. Cartier-Bresson)

The mirror with a memory: Henry Fox Talbot and Roland Barthes Since the inception of photography, it has been recognised that there is a unique, tangible connection between the photograph, its subject and time. Henry Fox Talbot, the creator of the calotype process,22 wrote the following on the formation of the photographic image in 1844, in The Pencil of Nature:23

22 The
precursor to negativepositive film with which we are all familiar and that dominated photography until the recent ascendency of the digital sensor. London. Available online: Project Gutenberg ebook 33447, www.gutenberg.org/files/33447/ 33447pdf.pdf, p. 4 [accessed 16/1/2012]. The Pencil of Nature is considered to be the first book illustrated by photographs what we today would call a photo book.
23 Fox Talbot, W.H. (1844) The Pencil of Nature, Part 1. Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans,
Now Light, where it exists, can exert an action, and, in certain circumstances, does exert one sufficient to cause changes in material bodies. Suppose, then, such an action could be exerted on the paper; and suppose the paper could be visibly changed by it. In that case surely some effect must result having a general resemblance to the cause which produced it
It is this connection with reality that differentiates the photograph from other pictorial media such as painting, and lies at the core of its singularity as a medium, as also noted by Fox Talbot:24
[Photographs] differ in all respects, and as widely as possible, in their origin, from plates of the ordinary kind, which owe their existence to the united skill of the Artist and the Engraver. They are impressed by Nature's hand
This ontological duality of the photograph is concisely summarised by Sontag, in her infuential 1977 book On Photography:25
a photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.
Sontags similes allude to the passing of time: the footprint and the death mask have been left behind what made them has moved on. Time and photography are inseparable. In 1859, Holmes26 coined a phrase that has echoed down 150 years,27 calling photography this invention of the mirror with a memory. The photograph is thus a dichotomous object a reflection of the past in the present. Roland Barthes examined this dichotomy in a seminal discourse on semiotics and photography, Rhetoric of the image,28 and considered the relationship between the photographic image and time to be unprecedented: the photograph is a truthful representation of an object in the past, and thus, unlike other media, we are presented with what Barthes terms the
24 Fox Talbot, W.H. (1844) Op. cit., p. 1. 25 Sontag, S. (1977) On Photography. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, p. 154. 26 Holmes, O.W. (1859) The stereoscope and the stereograph. Atlantic Monthly 3(20): 733748. 27 For example, see: Krakauer, S. (1980) Photography. In: A. Trachtenberg (ed.), Classic Essays on
Photography. Leetes Island Books, New Haven, CT, pp. 245268.

28 Barthes, R. (1974) Rhetoric of the image. In: Image, Music, Text. Fontana Press, London, p. 44.
Original publication in French: Barthes, R. (1964) Rhtorique de limage. Communication 4: 4647.
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havingbeenthere of the object. He then stated that all representations (paintings, photographs, sculptures, etc.) of an object evoke its presence the beingthere of the object which brings us back to our dichotomy: the photograph conflates the present and the past in Barthess words,29
What we have is a new spacetime category: spatial immediacy and temporal anteriority, the photograph being an illogical conjunction between the herenow and the therethen.
Now and here we are looking at a picture, but, unlike other kinds of image (say, a painting), the photograph has the unique property of making us aware of its making there in some other place and then in the past: the inextricable binding together of an object with time.30

Figure 5. A View of the Boulevards at Paris (W.H. Fox Talbot, May 1843)

29 Ibid., p. 44. 30 The relationship of the photograph with reality can be discussed more formally by considering it
as a semiotic sign in terms of Peirces index/icon/symbol triad, but this is outside the scope of this essay. For a basic introduction, see: Wright, T. (2004) The Photography Handbook, 2nd edn. Routledge, London, pp. 8185.
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The photograph is thus a most peculiar entity, seeming to exist simultaneously in the past and in the present. In The Pencil of Nature, Fox Talbot uses the present tense when describing his calotypes: under a Parisian scene (Figure 5), we read The weather is hot and dusty,31 but looking at the photograph changes the tense, and historical reality irrupts: one spring day long ago in Paris the weather was hot and dusty.
A twist in time: Thierry de Duve The Belgian theorist Thierry de Duve believes that photographic time is more than a simple evocation of the past (Barthess havingbeenthere32). In his article Time exposure and snapshot: the photograph as paradox, de Duve acknowledges a notion we met earlier when defining the decisive moment: that a photograph can be perceived in either of two ways eventlike or picturelike. If we see the photograph as eventlike, it is a frozen moment that cannot reveal the entirety of the event by definition an ongoing process: in de Duves words, a devilish device designed to capture life but unable to convey it that freezes onstage the course of life that goes on outside.33 Alternatively, the photograph is perceived as picturelike: it is then an image that no longer has any connection with the event simply a picture that is evidence of the past: it protracts onstage a life that has stopped offstage.34 Jussim35 has the former perception when looking at CartierBressons photograph of a man jumping over a puddle (see Figure 4, left): has CartierBresson in his decisive moment somehow abstracted this fellow from all time? Which category of perception prevails is dependent on the type of image. De Duve calls the eventlike photograph a snapshot, referencing the short exposure time that freezes motion, an example being the typical news photograph (Figure 6); the picturelike photograph he terms a time exposure, suggesting the long exposure time and static subjects of early portraiture (Figure 7). De Duves snapshot and time exposure are thus ciphers for categories of photographic images with specific visual qualities related to perception.
31 Fox Talbot, W.H. (1844) Op. cit., p. 17. 32 Barthes, R. (1974) Op. cit., p. 44. 33 De Duve, T. (1978) Op. cit., p. 113. 34 De Duve, T. (1978) Ibid. 35 Jussim, E. (1989) The Eternal Moment: Essays on the Photographic Image. Aperture, New York, p. 53.
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Figure 6. Rioting in Croydon a woman leaps from a burning building (A. Weston, 2011)

Figure 7. The time exposure: the traditional portrait falls into this category (Napa, California, photographer unknown, c. 1910)
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Regardless of whether a photograph is categorised as a snapshot or a time exposure, a photograph is perceived as a paradox both eventlike and picturelike: these perceptions are mutually exclusive and oscillate when we look at a photograph; and each has a distinctive psychological response. De Duve goes on to say that the snapshot (see Figure 6) presents us with an unperformed movement that refers to an impossible posture.36 In reality when the snapshot was taken time did not stand still, and the movement was performed, experienced visually as fluidity; in real time we can never see the frozen posture of the snapshot. What the camera shows us thus contradicts our eye and brain, and, despite the snapshot ostensibly showing truth, a posture from reality, such images look unnatural: the snapshot fails to convey the sensation of movement. As the sculptor Auguste Rodin once declared: It is the artist who tells the truth and photography that lies. For in reality time does not stand still.37 In contrast, the time exposure (see Figure 7) is experienced in the opposite way to the snapshot: there is congruence between the stillness of the image and the lack of movement the stasis in its past reality: unlike the snapshot, the time exposure depicts life as we actually see it, and hence we do not experience the abrupt artificiality of the snapshot. As we saw earlier, Barthes described our perception of a photograph as being a conjunction of herenow (the image) and therethen (reality). De Duve breaks down this paradoxical relationship into two new spatiotemporal conjunctions: herethen for the snapshot, and therenow for the time exposure.38 As with Barthess pairing of the present and the past, de Duves conjunctions too are illogical, so, when we look at a photograph, he suggests that our perception oscillates between here and then for a snapshot, and there and now for a time exposure.

36 De Duve, T. (1978) Op. cit., p. 114. 37 Rodin, A. and Gsell, p. (1984) Art: Conversations with Paul Gsell. University of California Press,
Berkeley, CA, p. 20. Originally published in 1911.

38 De Duves use of formerly does not accord with the English translation of Barthess article,
which uses then possibly because de Duve read Barthess essay in its original French. For consistency, then is used throughout this essay.
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When we look at a snapshot, we experience time suddenly splitting into the past and future always too late to witness the event or too early: the woman in Figure 6 landed safely in reality, but she has yet to do so in the photograph. The event is not happening now: it occurred then. This splitting of time is generated by the image the impossible posture here. In contrast, the time exposure depicts a state, not an event (i.e. stasis not movement), and, as there is no past or future time to spool off the image, we relate to the image temporally in the present, now. Its reality is also static and thus associated with space, not time (i.e. not then), locating it there in the past. De Duve summarised the relationship of these two types of photograph to time as follows: the snapshot refers to the fluency of time without conveying it, the time exposure petrifies the time of the referent and denotes it as departed.39 These two perceptions evoke different psychological responses. De Duve suggests that the herethen paradox of the snapshot is such an abrupt dichotomy that viewing this type of photograph is experienced as trauma, whereas looking instead at a time exposure induces a feeling of loss, a melancholy for the past as memory ebbs and flows. However, although de Duves discourse is undeniably appealing photographs of events do seem to evince different emotions compared with photographs of static objects, and de Duve posits a thoughtful and complex visual and psychological schema it is subjective, and the literature appears bereft of corroborating evidence. For example, de Duve provides no evidence for his semiotic mechanism, and a more intuitive subdivision of Barthes's deictic construct would be herethere (spatial) and nowthen (temporal)40 binaries commonly met within psychology,41 unlike de Duves, which are not mentioned. It is then possible to align eventlike photographs with nowthen, and picturelike photographs with herethere, the former image category being concerned

39 De Duve, T. (1978) Op. cit., p. 116. 40 This tentative mechanism has been posited simply to support the argument that de Duve has
failed to provide empirical evidence for his schema, thus allowing for alternative hypotheses. It is outside the scope of this essay to examine this mechanism closely for veracity, and it remains untested.
41 For example: Benson, C. (2001) The Cultural Psychology of Self: Place, Morality and Art in Human
Worlds. Routledge, London, p. 10.
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with time, the latter with space. The visual dissonance of the snapshot can consequently be explained in terms of discord between the image and reality, creating an abrupt oscillation in perception: we accept the photograph as a record of an event, but the frozen posture is impossible (as de Duve discusses), and past reality is invoked, where the fluidity of the completed event exists and accords with our sensibilities. The time exposure is static, and the image matches our expectations of reality, so (concurring with de Duve) there is a cyclical perception, as the present merges seamlessly into past reality and reemerges. A further criticism is that de Duves approach is resolutely Freudian psychoanalytical, and appeal to contemporary psychology42 would allow other hypotheses. For example, as an alternative to trauma, the arousal associated with the snapshot can be explained in terms of curiosity (the need to seek stimulation and explore)43 a drive hardwired into our genes that aided the survival of our ancestors on the African plains, risktakers being more successful (e.g. better hunters). There are various stimuli that trigger curiosity, of which the most significant are termed collative: their characteristics include contradiction, novelty, uncertainty and complexity all properties defining the snapshot and the event it depicts, but not the time exposure.
Not a tense moment: Peter Wollen Peter Wollen, in his article Fire and Ice,44 also discusses the semiotic relationship between photography and time, and suggests that this is more complex than it seems. However, in a

42 Today, psychology is a discipline rooted in empiricism, making testable inferences about human
mental processes such as de Duves concern here, perception. Freuds work is considered by modern psychologists to be vague, archaic and obsolete. Some critics have a particularly harsh view: there is literally nothing to be said, scientifically or therapeutically, to the advantage of the entire Freudian system or any of its component dogmas (Crews, F. (1996) The verdict on Freud. Psychological Science 7(2): 63). See also: Kihlstrom, J.F. (2000). Is Freud still alive? Freuds influence on psychology has been that of a dead weight. In: Atkinson, R. et al. (eds), Hilgards Introduction to Psychology, 13th edn. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, p. 481. Available online: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/freuddead.htm [accessed 16/1/2012]. See also footnote 48, on p. 21.
43 For example, using Berlynes theory of curiosity. See: Silvia, P.J. (2006) Exploring the Psychology
of Interest. Oxford University Press, New York, p. 33.

44 Wollen, p. (1984) Op. cit.
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volteface from Barthean discourses contrasting the temporality of the photographic present (the image) and the photographic past (reality), he investigates narrative time. Before continuing, a brief overview of the verb system will prove useful. Verbs describe a process, an event or a state: a process is an ongoing situation that results in a state, punctuated by events; an event is an action with a definite start and end; and a state is an unchanging situation. Verbs are categorised by tense and aspect. Tense locates an action in external time the past, present or future while aspect is concerned with only the internal time of the action, and denotes its temporal structure (inception, duration, completion, etc.), whether in the past, present or future. Aspect has two forms, perfective (completed actions) and imperfective (uncompleted actions), so, for example, he saw her and he will have seen her are perfective, while he was seeing her and he sees her are imperfective. A basic narrative sequence comprises elements in the order process event state, and, being a static image, a photograph cannot show an entire narrative but only a single narrative element. Wollens premise is that looking at photographic images as elements of narrative as a process, event or state and at aspect (internal time) rather than tense (external time) may provide additional insights into the semiotics of photography by stepping outside of the usual polarised approach to photographic time of the present versus the past. As evidence, Wollen first examines captions, and notes concordance between the verbal form of captions and titles to photographs and image content, which, he conjectures, is explained by an intuitive recognition of the narrative form depicted (e.g. Wollen goes on to suggest the following broad scheme for different photographic genres: most documentary photographs signify a state (sometimes a process, i.e. susceptible to interruption); news photographs, an event; and art photographs, a state. This, then, provides a context for informed interrogation of the photographic image. As Green comments,45 excluding

45 Green, D. (2006) Marking time: photography, film and temporalities of the image. In: Green, D.
and Lowry, J. (eds), Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image. Photoworks/ Photoforum, Brighton, p. 18.
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external time while analysing internal time through aspect allows notions of time in a photograph such as change, duration, ordering and demarcation to be explored. This can not only help us to understand the photographic image but also clarify its cultural and social context. Wollen also ponders the stasis of the photographic image its frozen time seeing aptness when it depicts stillness (state) but paradoxical incongruity when it signifies motion (event or process). Ambiguity can be a problem with Wollens approach. As a photographic image is static, it can be unclear from a single photograph whether a process, event or a state is being depicted: for example, does Figure 8 show a process (she is lying on the bed), an event (she lay on the bed) or a state (she lies on the bed)?

Figure 8. Process, event or state? Untitled #3764 (T. Hido, 2005)
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The decisive moment decoded

In spite of potential weaknesses, de Duves schema helps us to understand why we find photographs of the decisive moment so compelling. First, photographs of the decisive moment depict an event. They thus fall within de Duves snapshot category, which explains the tension we feel when looking at a decisive moment such as that in Ha Phan, Vietnam (Figure 9): the unease is partly, of course, because we are aware of impending violence and death in this example, but this feeling is innate to de Duves snapshot, which depicts a real object frozen in a seemingly impossible position. There is an extraordinary video installation by the artist David Claerbout, in which the plane from Mines photograph is extracted and composited against an animated background sequence of photographs, taken by Claerbout close to the position of the 1967 image (Figure 10).46 The installation appears initially to be a photograph, the disintegrating plane suspended over a still jungle, but then slight movement is noticed, as clouds and shadows in the landscape subtly and slowly change; the plane remains quiescent, frozen in time. The feeling that this video arouses as we try to reconcile actual reality with depicted reality is disturbing, highlighting in no uncertain terms de Duves unperformed movement referring to an impossible posture: watching the video is vertiginous like teetering on the edge of a precipice, waiting to fall. Secondly, photographs of the decisive moment are defined by their very deliberate pictorial composition. Consider Figure 9: the parts of the plane cupped by the hills, the lines of hills intersecting just under the plane, the symmetry between the buildings on the left and right, the interplay between the dark trees and the tail fin, the demarcation of the foreground by a line of bushes This equivalency between being eventlike and picturelike allows photographs of the decisive moment to oscillate readily between de Duves time exposure and snapshot categories our gaze changing from calm contemplation to stupefied and back again. This duality of perception elicited by the decisive moment is a plausible explanation of its allure.

46 Green, D. (ed.) (2004) Visible Time: The Work of David Claerbout. Photoworks, Brighton, p. 32.
Hlzl, I. (2011) The photographic now: David Claerbouts Vietnam. Intermdialits 17: 131145.
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Figure 9. US plane shot down by friendly fire (Ha Phan, Vietnam, H. Mine, 1967 Spot News second prize, World Press Photo Contest 1967)

Figure 10. Still from Vietnam, 1967, near Duc Pho (Reconstruction after Hiromichi Mine) (D. Claerbout, 1991 large-screen video installation)
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De Duve has thus shown us that there is something unique in how we perceive photographs of the decisive moment compared with static images, and, even if his schema is refined in the future, it has contributed towards creating a critical theoretical framework for the decisive moment. Wollens approach to time sheds further light on the decisive moment by placing emphasis on narrative. Examining the news photograph Ha Phan, Vietnam from this perspective,47 we note the imperfective aspect the plane is falling. The narrative element is an event (not a process, which the documentary genre would imply), so the interest lies not primarily in the situation itself but in how it starts and ends, implying questions such as: Why did the plane fall? What is going to happen? Once we know the immediate answers that it was shot down by friendly fire, and the ensuing crash killed the entire crew associated questions arise: Why did this occur? Was friendly fire commonplace? Did this haunting photograph affect public opinion?
Concluding remarks
We have contemplated what comprises the decisive moment, then gone on to investigate a possible underlying visual and psychological mechanism (applying de Duves insights), followed by a closer look at how narration works in this type of photograph (using Wollens discourse). Both approaches to examining the decisive moment are useful, and complement each other: the former offering a possible explanation of why photographs of the decisive moment are so visually potent, the latter clarifying the signification of the image what it is telling us. It seems that notions of time are central to understanding the decisive moment. There are shortcomings with both approaches, but these do not affect their base frameworks nor their application to the decisive moment, provided the weaknesses are borne in mind. A notable drawback to de Duves discourse is his adherence to Freudian psychoanalysis: that his two defining categories of photographic image the snapshot and the time exposure evoke very different psychological responses is not contended, but
47 This is a straightforward example to deconstruct, but it suffices to show the principle. Examining
Todd Hidos ambiguous photograph in Figure 8 (p. 17) would be more interesting, but is outside the scope of this essay, being staged and not a decisive moment. Picture stories sequences of photographs would also be amenable to investigation using Wollens ideas.
21
modern psychology is a science, and demands empiricism: CAT scanning and neuroscience are relevant to psychology today, not Freud.48 Finally, CartierBresson once wrote the following an apposite note on which to end a discussion on the decisive moment:49
To take photographs means to recognize simultaneously and within a fraction of a second both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting ones head, ones eye and ones heart on the same axis.
Bibliography
Barthes, R. (1974) Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein. In: Image, Music, Text. Fontana Press, London, pp. 6978. (Original publication in French: Barthes, R. (1973) Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein. Revue dEsthtique 26: 185191.) Barthes, R. (1974) Rhetoric of the image. In: Image, Music, Text. Fontana Press, London, pp. 3251. (Original publication in French: Barthes, R. (1964) Rhtorique de limage. Communication 4: 4647.) Benson, C. (2001) The Cultural Psychology of Self: Place, Morality and Art in Human Worlds. Routledge, London. Bruner, S.B. (2002) Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. CartierBresson, H. (1952) The Decisive Moment. Simon and Schuster, New York. CartierBresson, H. (1999) The Minds Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers. Aperture, New York. Clark, A.H. (2008) Diderots Part. Ashgate, Aldershot. Crews, F. (1996) The verdict on Freud. Psychological Science 7(2): 6368. De Duve, T. (1978) Time exposure and the snapshot: the photograph as paradox. October 5: 113125. DuChemin, P. (2011) Photographically Speaking: A Deeper Look at Creating Stronger Images. New Riders, Berkeley, CA.

48 Arguably, the final nail in Freuds coffin was the cognitive revolution of the 1950s. See: Miller,
G.A. (2003) The cognitive revolution: a historical perspective. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7(3): 141144.
22
Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Alfred Eisenstaedt, www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/ 181526/AlfredEisenstaedt [accessed 16/1/2012]. Fox Talbot, W.H. (1844) The Pencil of Nature, Part 1. Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, London. (Available online: Project Gutenberg ebook 33447, www.gutenberg.org/files/ 33447/33447pdf.pdf, p. 4 [accessed 16/1/2012].) Green, D. (ed.) (2004) Visible Time: The Work of David Claerbout. Photoworks, Brighton. Green, D. (2006) Marking time: photography, film and temporalities of the image. In: Green, D. and Lowry, J. (eds), Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image. Photoworks/ Photoforum, Brighton, pp. 921. Holmes, O.W. (1859) The stereoscope and the stereograph. Atlantic Monthly 3(20): 733748. Hlzl, I. (2011) The photographic now: David Claerbouts Vietnam. Intermdialits 17: 131145. Jussim, E. (1989) The Eternal Moment: Essays on the Photographic Image. Aperture, New York. Kihlstrom, J.F. (2000). Is Freud still alive? Freuds influence on psychology has been that of a dead weight. In: Atkinson, R. et al. (eds), Hilgards Introduction to Psychology, 13th edn. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, p. 481. (Available online: http://socrates.berkeley.edu/ ~kihlstrm/freuddead.htm [accessed 16/1/2012].) Krakauer, S. (1980) Photography. In: A. Trachtenberg (ed.), Classic Essays on Photography. Leetes Island Books, New Haven, CT, pp. 245268. Lessing, G.E. (1853). Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (trans. E.C. Beasley). Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, London. (Original publication in German: Lessing, G.E. (1766) Laokoon: oder ber die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie Mit beylufigen Erluterungen verschiedener Punkte der alten Kunstgeschichte. Voss, Berlin.) Miller, G.A. (2003) The cognitive revolution: a historical perspective. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7(3): 141144. Roberts, J. (2009) Photography after the photograph: event, archive, and the nonsymbolic. Oxford Art Journal 32(2): 281298. Rodin, A. and Gsell, p. (1984) Art: Conversations with Paul Gsell. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Shen, Y. and Biberman, E. (2010) A story told by a picture. Image and Narrative 11(2): 177197. Silvia, P.J. (2006) Exploring the Psychology of Interest. Oxford University Press, New York. Sontag, S. (1977) On Photography. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York. Szarkowski, J. (1966) The Photographers Eye. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Wollen, p. (1984) Fire and ice. Photographies 4: 118120. Wright, T. (2004) The Photography Handbook, 2nd edn. Routledge, London.

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Photography and time: decoding the decisive moment

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Decoding the decisive moment