Kaydin Chappel “Perfect and Unrehearsed”

In Teju Coles’ essay “Perfect and Unrehearsed”, my favorite photo was Suzhou Creek by Henri Cartier-Bresson. I definitely considered this photo to be an art style photo. However with more historical context on Suzhou Creek one could argue that it was a documentary photo on the working culture of the area. Cartier-Bresson was originally inspired to publish his The Decisive Moment, by Martin Munkacsi’s Three Boys in Liberia because it showed him “photography could reach eternity through the moment”. This was particularly interesting to me as I interpreted the quote to highlight Cartier-Bresson’s epiphanic appreciation for photography’s ability to eternalize a moment in time. This directly translates into Suzhou Creek as it appears to be a ‘day-in-the-life’ for these men, even the compositional techniques are ‘unrehearsed’. The poles create leading lines and as Coles puts it “a kaleidoscopic coherence” with working men in the middle and an older man relaxing in the foreground. Following the lines as they cross and weave through each other we can see the clutter of the workplace materials and varying expressions of the workers. It makes me wonder what are they doing? What are the poles for? The anchor is atop the boat so are they moving or stationary? All of these questions posed from one photo, this snapshot of one tiny moment of these men’s lives can help viewers peer into what their lifetime might’ve looked like. I continue to emphasize the phrase “to me”, because as Teju Cole stated “There is no single right answer, just as there’s no photographic formula”, this is what made Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment one of the most influential photography books ever. It is because it is understood that to some Suzhou Creek isn’t ‘perfect’ and the commotion of the photo can be perceived as an overwhelming disaster, but photography as an art form is so innately subjective that it can only be analyzed with fluid and undefined terms like perfect.