'A sense of moment'

On the Guardian website today there was a photo by Gianni Berengo Gardin called ‘a sense of moment’. The photo was taken on a commuter water bus in venice in 1960.

When I first looked at this photo, I didn’t really know what I was looking at, the area that gets my attention first is the middle of the frame where it looks like the man has oblongs cut outs in his back where you can see some double doors with a man looking down at a newspaper. The area actually shows the reflection in a glass door and if the man behind had been wearing white it wouldn't have worked as the outline of the reflection is so clear that it actually looks real.

The photo creates confusion until you realise what you are looking at, there is a also lot going on in the picture, nine people’s heads, people going about their day independently of each other but contained temporarily in this space. I like the picture, it’s not a pleasing image as such, but one I find interesting and curious. This clever composition is entitled ‘a sense of a moment’, Gardin was certainly paying attention to his surroundings when he captured this moment. One of his ‘top tips’ is “be curious, look at everything, read everything – photography books but novels too”

Henri Cartier Bresson included this image in a book of 100 of the most important photographs of all time, accolade indeed.