December 21 2005

Text By Greg Fallis

Henri Cartier-Bresson called it the decisive moment. In 1952 he wrote, "To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression."

Here we have such a moment; a beautifully composed precise fraction of a second that records an event that is significant beyond the superficial. Five men sitting together in an airport, waiting for a plane. Five men who, despite their proximity in age and race and physical space, are almost entirely isolated from each other. They're locked in the grip of a cultural imperative: heterosexual white guys do not suddenly start chatting with each other. They don't even look at each other.

"There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture," Cartier-Bresson said. "Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera." Lorrie McClanahan has terrific intuition.