“Photography is not documentation but intuition, a poetic experience. It’s drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, then sniff, sniff, sniff- being sensitive to coincidence. You can’t go looking for it: you can’t want it or you won’t get it. First you must lose yourself. Then it happens"
~ Henri Cartier-Bresson
1908-2004
Of course Henri had one of the great noses in the history of photography for sniffing out where a great, great image might be lurking and fortunately possessed the eye and the intelligence and god given talent to complement his instincts. There is no better example of this than this image of the Bicyclist in Hyeres. One of so many great images he left us throughout his long and distinguished career. He was Mozart. How can one person come up with so many great pieces of music? Henri was the same. He just defied the norm. If you or I or any mere mortal had been in the same situation that day in 1932 the bicyclist would have been in Brooklyn before we would have realized that there was an image to be taken.
