REFLECTIONS ON HUMANISM

In front of our house lay a field. Above it, jacob's ladders descended from a cloudy sky. I remember vividly how I was captivated by the beauty of this natural phenomenon. I must have been about 7 years old. My grandmother had recently gifted me a small point and shoot camera. My father had loaded it with some black and white film. My whole body was rushing with excitement. This mesmerizing play of light, I just had to capture it.

I ran off to the field with another boy from the street and started to take pictures of the sky. I was going to be able to show the whole world how beautiful it was. If not for the other boy that was with me. He told me to open te camera. I thought this was exactly what I wasn't supposed to do, but he insisted, and I naively decided to trust him. The first photographs I took, were completely ruined.

I was very disappointed of course. No longer was I going to be able to show how beautiful the light pierced through the clouds that afternoon. It didn't hold me back from pursuing a career in photography, although it would be a few years before things became serious.

After the summer holidays, my father would give me the photographs he didn't need for his album. I would make my own album with them, write down the locations. I was fascinated by how beautiful the world was and wanted nothing more than to share this appreciation with everyone else.

From the money I had saved through my summer jobs, I bought my first camera in the late 1990s Now, I would be able to take my own photographs. I was still fascinated by the picturesque landscapes I had seen in history books, the Breughel landscapes, but also those from the later romantic period, with small figures roaming about, amongst beautiful forests and nostalgic ruins, bathing in gentle warm light.

Biking to the outskirts of my hometown, I'd photograph the colourful sunsets, or the snowy fields with sheep and cows, aiming to capture the sights as beautifully as they came to me.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

It was at the turn of the century, with the rise of the internet, that my father pointed to a tiny article in the newspaper that mentioned a photography critique website. A place where people would post their pictures and comment on each others work. Still in the early days of internet, rather than writing snappy comments, people actually wrote whole dissertations when commenting. Going into the details of light, composition, art history. I was immediatly hooked, rushing home from school to see if people had commented my latest upload and what else was going on in the forums.

It was an accelerator for me. I spent most of my time photographing, finding out which film was best to shoot with, scanning the film and sharing them on the internet. It is also through this website that I got introduced to the masters of photography. I was especially captivated by the works of the humanist photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. His incredible eye for composition, the way he held his images together with flawlessly arranged lines, and of course the gentleness with which he looked at the world.

In high school, rather than buying a branded agenda, I took a small, soft cover one I got for free somewhere and customized it. I cut out some photographs from magazines that I found inspiring. Robert Capa and Henri-Cartier Bresson. I glued them on the cover and back and used a transparent adhesive film to cover it all off. I was particularly careful in ensuring the pictures were clear cut and no air bubbles would remain under the protective film.

Henri Cartier Bresson

It took me an evening to put together but was so much more than a handcrafting exercise. Cutting out the images meant I was focussed on them, in an interactive way. It meant I became bound to them through the process. My youthful imagination allowed me to travel the world through the works of these photographers. I was in Spain during the civil war, in India , and of course in Paris.

It's fascinating how true value is created by simply applying oneself with passion and love for whatever it is we are doing. A value that cannot be expressed in monetary terms. It is the coin with which life pays you the finest of rewards.

The works of Cartier-Bresson were not only inspiration to apply myself or an invitation to travel by mind. They also spoke to me of humanity in the warmest of ways. Void of judgement. You can feel that the photographer looked at the world around him through loving eyes. This humanist perspective resonates strongly with me and drives my photography ever since I was introduced to it.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

It wasn't long before I'd start taking the train to Paris to follow in his footsteps, attempting to document the streets and inhabitants the way the great masters did, much to the annoyance of my travel companions, who rightfully felt I was too absorbed by the world as it appeared through my viewfinder. What I had learnt from studying HCB’s works, was that a photograph has the power to turn a world that exists in full blown chaos, into perfect harmony, provided the elements that make up the picture are perfectly arranged inside the frame’s limits. It’s not just a trick of composition but a way of looking at the world, it is the conscious act of taking a perspective that communicates beauty and that opens portals to new ways of seeing.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Recently, while watching a documentary on Sabine Weiss, I was struck by a comment on the nostalgia we experience when looking at the humanist photographs today. The post-war period was one of regained freedom, reconstruction. Humanity, at least the part of it living in Western Europe, was breathing again. It made me wonder what kind of experience they went through at the time, what kind of idea they may have had of the future as the documented a changing world. I can’t help but feel that there couldn’t be a more striking contrast between those times and the ones we’re living today.

The human condition and it's struggles are of all times, also in the post war period. But what does it mean to struggle in a dying world? For the first time in human history, at least in as far as it has been documented through photography, it is not only humanity that is making lives difficult through it's wars and exploitation, but it is happening against the background of a collapsing natural environment.

What kind of humanity will we see in a few decades from now, thriving or surviving in such instability? And as a humanist inspired photographer, how do you document the world around you, knowing that your teachers worked in a world that was crawling out of the depths towards better days, whereas myself and contemporary photographers with me, photograph a world that is becoming more dire by the day.

I find a little hope in the loving eye, the absence of judgement, and the passion to document that I took away from the humanist photographers. Although I must admit, the recent political developments do little to increase any optimism. The backdrop of a collapsing natural environment does however add a layer of urgency and complexity to the task of documenting the human experience. The world today, marked by environmental- and geopolitical instability, and the images captured by photographers could serve as relevant historical records for future generations.

When I embarked on my photographic journey I had no idea it would lead me to a universe where environmental activism and fine art merge to tell a tragic story through an aesthetically balanced body of work. For long I considered my work out of touch with time, nostalgic and dreamy perhaps. But seeing where we stand today, I might have been closer the the essence of what is unfolding than I expected. But more on that in my next update.

Robert Capa