"Army Day" Parade, Forbidden City, Beijing, China 1948

Henri Cartier-Bresson made this photograph, "Army Day" Parade, in the Forbidden City, Beijing, sometime in the mid-20th century. The greyscale palette gives it a timeless quality, like a memory faded but not forgotten, and you can really sense the quickness of the moment, how his images were about feeling and the experience of the shot. Think about the guy with the camera in the foreground, he's just beaming! His joy is palpable. And then look at the figures in the background, so regimented, serious, and still. The texture of the stone in the Forbidden City looks almost soft, blurred, and hazy compared to the sharp, clear lines of the people in the foreground. I wonder if they noticed him? It's this kind of visual and emotional contrast that makes Cartier-Bresson so interesting. It feels like he’s not trying to give us a fixed answer, just pointing to a moment in time and letting us figure it out for ourselves. It reminds me a bit of Robert Frank, another street photographer who found beauty in the everyday and wasn't afraid to capture the messy, complicated reality of life.