2010, from Autobiography, in my iPad application Horvatland
Admittedly, my compositions left much to be desired. Even some of my best photos – like the one of the gleaner with her child or the one of the bathing widows – required cropping. Still, I believe that they ‘show more than their subject matter’, and that this trip to Pakistan and India has been the real beginning of my photography. In some, one can recognize a personal style – as long as this is not understood as a deliberately adopted formula, but as the sum of all those limitations that an artist cannot get rid of, even if he wants to, and that he has to compensate for, in one way or another. Such as (in my case! the fact of being more sensitive to the presence of a single person (or of a single object) than of the relationship between several persons or objects (which Cartier-Bresson knew so well how to capture). Or my preference for dim light (such as of an interior or even of a night-scene) rather than for direct sunlight. Or my relative disregard for moments of paroxysm (which are precisely what most photographers like to catch) but on the contrary my interest for the moments immediately before or after. Or, when faced with distress and suffering, my almost excessive rejection of sentimentality, which can carry me so far as to make me seem cynical.
1953, Punjab, India, gleaning woman and child
