Henri Cartier-Bresson: Terrorist?

A random thought ...

So lately, mostly because of 9/11, there have been a spate of unpleasant encounters between police and security guards and photographers, like this one, or this, or perhaps more generally this.  Usually, they have reminded me of my first trips to the old Soviet Union, when we were warned that photographing such harmless locations as airports or train stations or even major road intersections could result in an unpleasant encounter with the militia, as such locations were considered strategically important.  We all laughed.  But now, it's not unusual for Americans and Brits to have these problems.

When today, for some reason, Henri Cartier-Bresson's iconic 1932 photo, Dernier de la Gare Saint Lazare, popped into my head.  You know the one, the picture that everyone shows when they talk about the Decisive Moment.  In it, a man hangs suspended in mid-jump over a puddle ... not too high, not too low.  It's the perfect fraction of a second.

It's also a picture of a train station, shot between the bars of the fence surrounding it.  What would have happened to Cartier-Bresson today?

Then again, we already know what would have happened to him last year in Boston ...