I was on holiday in Tuscany a few weeks ago and was pretty chuffed when on a day trip to Lucca I saw that there was an exhibition of the work of Henri-Cartier Bresson at the Lucca Centre of Contemporary Art - http://www.luccamuseum.com/HCB.php .
There exhibition was pretty large, I would guess that there were about 60 or 70 photographs, all at the same size. The rooms were thematically and thereby somewhat chronologically based.
It was the first time I'd seen so much of persons work on display. Much of it I had already seen in various books, blogs etc, but it was interesting to see it all in one place. It's difficult to be unimpressed by the precision of photographs as well as the humour and warmth of the work - there is a genuine love and understanding of humanity at work here. That said, Bresson has been so influential and his approach so copied that unless you keep reminding yourself that you're looking at the original the work can look almost cliched. That said, the pictures do have a timeless quality to them and there is clear genius at play - the genius coming from the composition and timeliness.
However, the most enjoyable part of viewing the exhibition came from the fact that my family came in with me (I managed to convince them that they might enjoy it), and my youngest son in particular was really interested. He started by asking me what was so good about the photographs, but then he became fascinated when I started explaining about the compositions and the fact that everything only came together at that exact moment in time and about how the photographer needed to be patient and allow everything to come together, but also semi-predict what might happen and how it might look. In the end he stood with me while we looked at each photo and made me explain "why the photo was good". After a while he started to make his own assessments. Conversely to what usually happens when I go to an exhibition with the family - they rush me round - on this occasion, he slowed me down!
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