Decisive moments

Brief

The Decisive Moment' was the title used in English for Henri Cartier-Bresson’s 1952 photobook ‘Images a la Sauvette’ (transl. 'Images on the Run'). It encapsulates those fleeting moments of human behaviour that the photographer has a split-second to capture. Sometimes these are unexpected events , but other times, as Cartier-Bresson sometimes did, a location is staked out and the photographer waits for events to unfold in ways that might be somewhat anticipated beforehand. Cartier-Bresson taught us that photographers should always have their cameras to hand, and that a dedication to documenting the everyday world will undoubtedly be rewarded. Whilst there are many ‘decisive moments’ in other photographic genres, this contest is more focussed on street and documentary photography of the kind Cartier-Bresson focussed on.