Many of you have posted interesting thoughts about Bresson and the Decisive Moment. I would like to open the "floor" for some discussion about what it means to you. Once again there is no wrong answer. I'll start first:
The way I see it, the Decisive Moment is not a moment in our timeline. It is a moment in space that the Photographer envisioned, moved by and captured. As I mentioned in my lecture, Bresson was part of the surrealist movement in the 1920's and 30's, part of the surrealist philosophy had to do with the way by which an artist "received" images from the universe. Now, bare with me for a second, this is a bit out there by you may have heard about it already. The surrealist is aware of everything in the world around him, the mundane, the unexplained, the usual but not necessarily the spectacular. stop and think for a second! We are mostly inspired by the amazing but what about the those images that happen everyday, constantly repeating? A person jump over a puddle, or boys playing in the snow, or in the hot streets of brooklyn in 1981, all those images have some familiar emotional weight, something that make us feel good. The moment when the event occurred, the moment when the photographer recognized the event and its vast meaning, is the Decisive Moment. I'll take it even further and say that the moment never seized to exist. Each time we view the photograph the moment is what we feel. It can be utterly unfamiliar or common that does not matter; it is a moment well wordy of experiencing.
One more important point to understant is that the moment is not limited to a stop action shot, as in the man over a puddle.
For the next day try to be aware of such moments in your own life. Think about how would you capture them, what part of the action or nonaction you will choose to reproduce and why. Come back here and tell us about it in as much details as you can. The idea is to reproduce what you felt when you witness an event. Have fun!
