Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris 

This photograph captures the moment just before a leaping man’s foot splashes down in a puddle. Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson is known for having established the style of photography known as the “snapshot,” for which he used the just-released, compact Leica camera to spontaneously capture the circumstances of particular scenes. The Decisive Moment, which was the title of the US edition of the book in which this photograph was first published, eventually became synonymous with his work.
At the same time, the photograph contains numerous compositional elements that make its spontaneity all the more extraordinary: the silhouette of the leaping man with his image in reverse reflected on the surface of the water, the person in the poster behind him, and so on. The motifs and shapes scattered throughout the image resonate with each other, giving the photograph a sense of tension.
(MATSUNAGA Shintaro)