Learning about Landmarks

Discussion through works of art encourage how to approach ambiguous and complex ideas, thoughts, and feelings. The MFAH offers a democratic space where students and teachers can develop, practice and articulate these habits of mind. Remember that the quality of the conversation is what is important, not finding the artist’s “answer.” Slow down and take the time to make careful observations. Talk about what you notice, and try to avoid jumping to conclusions and interpretations. Be sure to give enough time for silent looking and thinking.

Work of Art

In 1962, Henri Cartier-Bresson and American architectural photographer Ezra Stoller were commissioned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to photograph historic buildings in Galveston, Texas.  In this photograph, the elegant bay window is partly obscured by a tree branch.  The artist focuses on the grand but decaying staircase and the young girl playing on the steps.

 

According to the commission, Cartier-Bresson was charged with recording the details of the house’s large bay window.  However, because the artist preferred photographing people, he focused on the animated figure of the young girl.  As a result, the lines and textures of the historic house become a foil for the girl, the structure’s age and decay a contrast to her youthful energy.  Cartier-Bresson used a small, hand-held camera that allowed him to move easily, capturing the life in and around buildings.

 

This photograph was included in a book titled The Galveston That Was, a project initiated by Houston architect Howard Barnstone and sponsored by the museum.  Barnstone wrote the text and Cartier-Bresson and Ezra Stoller contributed the photographs. The book’s foreword acknowledges that the museum chose in Cartier-Bresson and Stoller “two pairs of eyes of such broadly different curiosity.” Stoller’s photographs are intelligent, informative, clear, direct, and technically majestic. Cartier-Bresson’s work is ultimately less concerned with the architectural significance of the buildings he was commissioned to photograph than with the way the buildings were used, and misused, by their current inhabitants. Unlike Stoller, who excluded all but the random passerby, Cartier-Bresson found people irresistible and included them in almost every picture.

 

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a noted photojournalist and a master of the “one unique picture whose composition possesses such vigor and richness, and whose content so radiates outward from it, that this single picture is a whole story in itself.”¹ His ability to recognize intuitively moments of significance in human events, and to give them graceful form, influenced a generation of photographers on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

1.  Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), n.p.

Conversation

• What do you notice about this photograph? Look closely at the foreground and background.

• How does the artist use perspective? What angle do you think he was photographing from?

• Describe the different patterns in the photograph. Do they correspond with each other? How?

• Notice the cropping of the composition. How would this work be different if the whole house was shown? Compare this photo to Cartier-Bresson's other photo of the same house.

• Consider the leaves on the right side. How do they alter the view of the house? Do they soften it? Do they contrast with the house?

• What adjectives would you use to describe the style of this house?

• How would this image have been different if the artist would have used color?

• Consider the relationship between the horizontal patterns of the stairs and the wood on the house’s entrance. How does the artist use line in this image?

• Focus on the up-close view of the staircase that nearly dwarfs the house in the background. How does this influence our ideas about the house? What other words could describe the look of this house?

• Describe how the sense of movement in the figure walking up the stairs contrasts with the stillness of the house. Do they contrast in other ways?

• Is there a feeling of tension in the work of art? Or is there more of a flow? Or both?

• What does the photograph tell you about the type of neighborhood the house belongs to?

• In many of his photographs, the artist explored formal relationships. What personal connections can you make with this image? Where do you think it is situated? Can you see in what time it was built?

•  Study Derrick Man on the Empire State Building.  At what stage in the construction of the Empire State Building was this photograph taken?  How does the artist make the construction process appear labor intensive and challenging?

•  What is the age and condition of the Sawyer-Flood House?  What details in the photograph reveal the building’s age? Discuss this photograph as part of a project to record old buildings in Galveston, Texas. Why are such projects important? How does the photograph represent the time period in which it was taken?

Subject Matter

Assessment

• Ask students to research a particular event in history--i.e., the Civil War, the Galveston floods of 1900, the stock market crash of 1929--by finding photographs taken during that time. Ask students to find photographs of people, places, and things from the period in question.
  • In addition to library and internet sources, consider using the MFAH's online collection to locate photographs.
• Working individually in groups, prompt students to select several photographs that exemplify the period or event in question. Use a graphic organizer to record the details in each photo that characterize the event. 
• Have students pretend that they were photojournalists during that time. Using the information they gathered from photographs, ask students to write an article that could have been published in a newspaper next to one of the selected photographs.

Resources

Resources Available to Order

Check our online collection module for further information.