PHOTOGRAPHERS SPEAK says:
I created the “total vision” concept of Photosynthesis in opposition to the dogmatic concept of the “decisive moment” formed in the middle of the 20th century by Henri Cartier-Bresson. That aesthetic became the “canon obligatoire” in photography, and it also became a nice product for the export of French culture and lifestyle. The paradoxical fact is that the exceptional quality of Cartier-Bresson’s reportage, and the quality of documentary photography in France in general, brought photography to a standstill—like painting in the 19th century—and inhibited French photographers from developing a modern vision.