Henri Cartier-Bresson had a gift for seizing upon a chance occurrence or spontaneous incident of everyday life while simultaneously creating a composition of formal interest. The photographer would later refer to the capture of an all-important instant as “the decisive moment,” using this phrase as the title of his 1952 book. While Cartier-Bresson credited his training as a painter for enabling him to recognize such thematically and visually appealing subjects, it was also his use of a light-weight, small-scale Leica camera that allowed him to take multiple shots in succession and work, according to curator Beaumont Newhall, “without intrusion, silently, almost on tiptoe.”