Henri Cartier-Bresson's Still Pictures Bristle with Motion

• Henri Cartier-Bresson
• It's got a basket, a bell that rings and things that make it look good

A visit to the High Museum's Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition showcases a broad cross-section of pictures from one of the medium's most accomplished and influential photographers.

Blurring the lines between art, reportage, and journalism, Cartier-Bresson's body of work suggests both formal complexity, and haphazard happenstance. Its one thing to shoot incessantly a catch the occasional lucky shot.

Its another to showcase, over the course of decades, an uncanny ability to frame action, capture perfect reflections, trap telling expressions, force wicked juxtapositions that reveal hidden truths, and exhibit a keen eye for details that comment of the action within the frame.

Cartier-Bresson's photographs hint at the wicked, and wry sense of humor of the eye behind the lens.

His still shots both open a window on the world, and tweak the imagination of the viewer. While each photograph tells a story, the real power of his work is how it suggests a whole world of activity outside the frame, and beyond the instant.

His work invites comparison to cinema (and television) like few others. The pictures are like stills from a movie and as you look and examine the instant, the mind races to fill in the circumstances leading up to the shot, and the subsequent action afterwards.

The three notable shots that follow provide a glimpse of the delights this show has to offer.