{"id":9166,"date":"2011-01-24T04:00:15","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pindelski.org\/Photography\/?p=9166"},"modified":"2011-01-25T11:15:19","modified_gmt":"2011-01-25T18:15:19","slug":"hc-b-at-sf-moma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pindelski.org\/Photography\/2011\/01\/24\/hc-b-at-sf-moma\/","title":{"rendered":"HC-B at SF MOMA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>Not great.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>I finally made it to the Cartier-Bresson show at SF MOMA and have to say it was underwhelming.<\/p>\n<p>There are four &#8216;periods&#8217; in HC-B&#8217;s work:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The surrealist masterpieces 1931 -1951\n<li>The photojournalism &#8211; tourist snaps of China and Russia before they opened up\n<li>The portraits of famous people\n<li>America\n<\/ul>\n<p>The first is a beacon for modern photographers and was poorly shown, replete with low contrast small prints poorly lit, many yellowed.  The curse of the &#8216;original print&#8217; which I described <a href=http:\/\/pindelski.org\/Photography\/2005\/07\/08\/quality-time-with-ansel\/ target=_blank>here<\/a>.  Sure, his technique wasn&#8217;t the greatest, his exposure all over the place, but the work is definitive.  It needs better display than MOMA managed.  It&#8217;s this period that haunts, amazes and inspires.<\/p>\n<p>The second is blah.  Notable only for the fact that no Westerner had photographed these exotic places before.<\/p>\n<p>The third has generally left me cold but I&#8217;m warming to it after this show.  Too bad they didn&#8217;t include those two great shots of Giacometti crossing the street in the rain and moving one of his sculptures in the studio.<\/p>\n<p>The fourth?  Well, he sees only the crassness and vulgarity in America, something the show&#8217;s narrative repeats.  He just does not &#8216;get&#8217; America but, then again, he was <i>French<\/i> &#8211; an honorable excuse!<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s on for another week, then moves to Atlanta.  The MOMA show has too many mediocre works and displays over 200 pieces.  80 would have done it.<\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pindelski.org\/Blog\/HCB_SF_MOMA.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"525\" alt=\"\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pindelski.org\/Blog\/HCB_SF_MOM4.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" alt=\"\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pindelski.org\/Blog\/HCB_SF_MOMA5.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" alt=\"\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pindelski.org\/Blog\/HCB_SF_MOMA2.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"525\" alt=\"\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pindelski.org\/Blog\/HCB_SF_MOMA3.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"534\" alt=\"\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pindelski.org\/Blog\/HCB_SF_MOMA6.jpg\" width=\"800\" height=\"368\" alt=\"\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>As you can see it was zooed, making the small prints even harder to enjoy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not great. I finally made it to the Cartier-Bresson show at SF MOMA and have to say it was underwhelming. There are four &#8216;periods&#8217; in HC-B&#8217;s work: The surrealist masterpieces 1931 -1951 The photojournalism &#8211; tourist snaps of China and Russia before they opened up The portraits of famous people America The first is a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pindelski.org\/Photography\/2011\/01\/24\/hc-b-at-sf-moma\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">HC-B at SF MOMA<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photographers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pindelski.org\/Photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pindelski.org\/Photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pindelski.org\/Photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pindelski.org\/Photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pindelski.org\/Photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9166"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/pindelski.org\/Photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9211,"href":"https:\/\/pindelski.org\/Photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9166\/revisions\/9211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pindelski.org\/Photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pindelski.org\/Photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pindelski.org\/Photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}