Moment(s)

Portraits
For Cartier-Bresson, “Portraits are the only thing in which photography
surpasses painting.” He has said that photographs can dig for the soul since
the artist needs never to be concerned with capturing likeness of the subject.
When shooting strangers and portraits on the street, Cartier-Bresson aimed
to instill and teach empathy to his viewers for the subject – something he
believed could not be done when staging a photo. “‘Manufactured’ or staged
photography does not concern me. And if I make a judgment it can only be on
a psychological or sociological level. There are those who take photographs
arranged beforehand and those who go out to discover the image and seize
it.” Cartier-Bresson seeks to seize it as he did when he captured the beauty
of prostitutes peeking their heads out of small holes in Mexico (p. 46) or the
dignity of a worker at the central market in Paris (p. 62). The environment of
his subjects is essential in capturing someone’s soul, “for man, no less than
animals, has his habitat.”
While Cartier-Bresson seeks to reveal the soul, Michals believes this to be
nearly impossible:
“I don’t believe that people are what they appear to be. You
can make a person look like anything you want him to. If he’s
crying you can make him look like a dope fiend. If you catch
him mid-yawn, I mean, you know. And the persons themselves
don’t know who they are. Their only concern is vanity. I’ve
always found the bottom line is vanity. It’s how good do I look?
I don’t try to make anyone look unattractive, but I don’t try
to flatter either. I simply try to deal with what I find… It’s an
artificial relationship. I think maybe Cartier-Bresson’s portraits,
where he sneaks up on people, have more validity, but I much
prefer to take charge of the photograph.”
Cartier-Bresson has said, “One must always take photographs with the
greatest respect for the subject and for oneself.” As for Michals, “Good
portraits are always that, the balance between the person being who he is
plus the identity of the photographer.” Unaware of their speakers, it would
be easy to believe these two quotes came from the same photographer.
Both artists have their personal dissatisfactions and issues with portraits and
take a similar stance on the importance and unavoidable presence of the
photographer in any situation.
Both would also agree that when the subject is uncomfortable in front of the
camera, the validity of the portrait is a futile attempt. Cartier-Bresson takes
the risk in the hopes of finding that “decisive moment” that is neither staged
nor presupposing of his own opinions to reveal something new of his subject.
On the other end, Michals, through stages and sequences, discusses an
identity all humans inherently own that consists of a common life cycle, from
birth to death, including unavoidable losses that arise over time, the control
of love and lust in our behaviors, or the implications of being different. He
questions the barriers between existing, being, and not being, in himself, but
more prominently, for humanity as a whole.
When asked about his portrait of Joseph Cornell (p. 41) Michals admits
that all photos are a balance between the subject and the photographer’s
perspective. Similarly, on his photos of Warhol (p. 49), Michals says, ”I didn’t
pervert the identity, but I balanced it like a teeter-totter with my own way of
seeing.”
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