Called “Images à la Sauvette” (Images on the Sly) in French and “The Decisive Moment” in English, this book, with a wrap-around cover by Henri Matisse, is one of the most influential in the history of photography as an exemplar of how image and design can together make statements that transcend that of any single photograph, commingling together in what is more than a book of photographs but what is now called a photobook. “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition in a fraction of a second of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression,” the author wrote in his Zen-like way. Clément Cheroux’s 2015 re-issue provides an enormous amount of valuable contextualizing information.
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