Henri Cartier-Bresson
Fire in Hoboken, facing Manhattan. 1947

This photograph was captured by the infamous street photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cartier-Bresson was the French pioneer of street photography and gave rise to candid photography as well. His oeuvre is filled with extremely decisive and awe-inspiring photographs of very peculiarly captured moments.

After reading Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, I have come to see every photograph in a very different light. As a photographer myself, I have always seen a photograph very differently but Barthes has allowed me to bring out a new meaning within each photograph. As he struggled to define photography, he introduced the terms studium and punctum in order to distinguish the most personally animating and piercing parts of a photograph which in turn assist in understanding a photograph.

This photograph is called Fire in Hoboken, facing Manhattan and the moment I saw it in the works of Cartier-Bresson, I was taken aback. I instantly noticed the studium in the picture. The studium in this picture is the charred remains of a building left behind after a fire. I noticed the billowing spoke that engulfs the horizon of the picture, cradling the ruins as a solace of the aftermath. Additionally, I noticed that the spray of water further adds to the studium of the photograph by bringing the subject into context. The aftermath of the fire can also be seen as the spectrum, the subject posing for the picture, in this photograph. After thoroughly examining the studium in this photograph, I decided to look for the punctum. As Barthes explains, the punctum is different for everyone and it incites a piercing response in the viewer. Remembering those words of Barthes’s, I viewed the punctum to be the rising Manhattan skyline in the background of the picture. I recognized that as the punctum because it is very odd to see the contrast of towering skyscrapers along with the rubble of a burned building. It brought out a completely different response within me to notice the towering buildings while seeing what would be the result or future of said buildings after a such a tragic event. The skyline is also the spectator in this case, looking down at the charred remains of the building. The inclusion of the skyline also lowers the tragic nature of the photograph by adding a layer of contrast. Overall, this photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson contains both a studium and a punctum and the identification of said studium and punctum leads to a deeper and more thought provoking understanding of the photograph.