Henri Cartier-Bresson

Fire takes four of his ten planets, water three, earth two and a single one air, with five of the ten cardinal. His Moon's sign is certain at ten degrees of Cancer, which matters more than usual here, because the chart holds a T-square on the Moon, Saturn and Uranus that would otherwise have been unusable. The Sun, Mars and Jupiter sit inside three and a half degrees of Leo, and the Moon, Venus and Neptune inside six degrees of Cancer. Saturn and Uranus were the two retrograde planets. The record says Cartier-Bresson co-founded Magnum and gave photography the idea of the decisive moment, and that he worked with one lens, never cropped, and painted tape over the chrome so the camera would not be noticed.

There is a problem in that record which this entry has to own rather than step around. The man credited with the idea that meaning concentrates in a single instant has no recorded birth instant. His time is not on file, so this chart is cast for noon like most in this set, and the hour that would locate him exactly is the one piece of information missing. A reader who finds that funny is not wrong, and it is a better joke than anything a reading could supply.

The record's other three facts are all constraints he put on himself: one lens, no cropping, and tape over the chrome. Against that, the Sun sits conjunct Mars at nine hundredths of a degree, read as courage and competitiveness with a low tolerance for being told to wait, and Mars stands at an awkward angle to Uranus at just over half a degree, action without warning, glossed as abrupt breaks and as a temper with no build-up. A working life spent narrowing the equipment is not what either of those describes.

Jupiter sits sixty degrees from Pluto at fifteen hundredths of a degree, effective power, which the record gives nothing to test. He died at Montjustin on 3 August 2004, at ninety five, nineteen days short of his birthday. Two contacts came inside a tenth of a degree that day and both were Mars: sixty degrees from his natal Pluto at seven hundredths and conjunct his natal Jupiter at eight hundredths. The Moon was full and ninety per cent lit.