The Decisive Moment

In my research on photographic psychology and online photo-sharing communities (Suler, 2012), I have recently focused on one of the most fascinating and highly debated concepts in the history of photography: “the decisive moment.” This concept was first proposed by Henri Cartier-Bresson, who is considered by many to be the founder of modern photo-journalism. He believed this moment occurs when the visual and psychological elements of people in a real life scene spontaneously and briefly come together in perfect resonance to express the essence of that human situation. Some people believe that the unique artistic purpose of photography, as compared to other visual arts, is to capture this fleeting, quintessential, and holistic instant in the flow of life. In the introduction to his book The Decisive Moment (1952, pp. 1-14), Cartier-Bresson said:

I kept walking the streets, high-strung, and eager to snap scenes of convincing reality, but mainly I wanted to capture the quintessence of the phenomenon in a single image. Photographing, for me, is instant drawing, and the secret is to forget you are carrying a camera … There are those who take photographs arranged beforehand and those who go out to discover the image and seize it. For me the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to ‘give a meaning’ to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry … It is putting one's head, one's eye, and one's heart on the same axis. It is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's originality. It is a way of life.

Some contemporary photographers dismiss the decisive moment as an outdated idea because fast burst digital cameras in our contemporary age make it much easier to capture such fleeting momen