A note from a manuscript I18th January 1996:
"If, in making a portrait , you hope to capture the inner silence of a willing victim, it is very difficult to insert a camera between his shirt and his skin"
Until very near the end of his life Cartier Bresson continued do portraits , if we can believe his own statements, he found it a laborious task, but one he was particularly fond of: "taking a portrait is the hardest thing for me. It's like placing a question mark over someone"
I find this interesting as the question mark over someone is what the portrait sets out to do, for the sitter or the viewer, what am I saying? What am I looking at? A portrait is a statement of that moment in time.
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