stolen moments

stolen moments
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

If I'd know every plane that I might hope to hop out of LaGuardia was stacked one on top of another in the wake of severe electrical storms in Chicago, I probably would have taken more time this afternoon than the brief interlude I was able to steal (between a meeting that wrapped early and a cab that was destined to take me --jolting and revolting in one of those gotta accelerate full speed and then slam on my brakes even if I'm only inching forward a couple of feet rides) -- I probably would have lingered a little bit longer at the International Center for Photography.

Louise Brooks was there -- that's her up above in a shot swiped from the brochure for the "'New Woman' in Weimar Cinema" exhibit. Lovely stuff -- luminous, powerful, polyamorous -- but she was just the gravy.

I was there to see Henri Cartier-Bresson, in an exhibition of the "Scrapbook" photographs that he compiled for MoMA after he emerged from the grave -- literally -- escaping a German concentration camp after everyone thought he was dead.

And I was pleased and startled to see Martin Munkacsi, an Austrian photographer whose photography (one shot in particular -- that of three boys running into the sea) Bresson would later remark made him say "Damn!" and grab his camera and run into the street -- because he didn't know photography could look like that.

It was, to use Mr. Cartier-Bresson's phrase, a brief moment de graĉe -- a moment of extreme pleasure -- in a day that was otherwise nasty and brutish and, apparently, interminable.


Update from the desk -- another storm just hit Chicago. I may be here all night.