Up: [[Life Writing]] Created: 2024-03-03 Updated: 2025-01-19 The term ‘decisive moment’ comes from photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson > [!Orbit] Henri Cartier-Bresson > The decisive moment 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. Look at any *Time-Life* magazine collection of top photos from a specific time period and you’re looking at decisive moment shots. They are photos that become the defining metaphor of an event, not just for the photographer but for viewers. Perfect examples include Dorothea Lange’s Depression-era photograph of [the migrant mother](https://www.history.com/news/migrant-mother-new-deal-great-depression) and Nick Ut’s Vietnam war photograph of [napalm girl](https://www.cnn.com/style/article/napalm-girl-50-snap/index.html). Cartier-Bresson’s definition is specific to photography and usually applied to high-impact photos at that. Two other quotes help with a much more manageable definition of the decisive moment for writers of Beams. > [!Orbit] Barrie Jean Borich, ‘Writing into the Flash: On Finding Short Nonfiction’s Decisive Moment’ in *The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Flash Nonfiction* > The flash nonfiction writer’s version of the decisive moment comes of noticing, and accepting a subject small and precise enough to be contained in such a brief container. We write into the flash of new understanding, then we gather up and get out before the flash fades. > [!Orbit] Anais Nin in *A Woman Speaks* > Put yourself right in the present. This was my principle when I wrote the diary — to write the thing I felt most strongly about that day. Start there and that starts the whole unravelling, because that has roots in the past and it has branches into the future…I chose the event of the day that I felt most strongly about, the most vivid one, the warmest one, the nearest one, the strongest one.