Photos - Fotos: Henri Cartier-Bresson - Part 1 - Bio data - 19 photos - His first camera - Su primera camara
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Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
L'Aquila degli Abruzzi 1952
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Behind Saint-Lazare Train Station
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Iphnos Greece 1961
L'Aquila degli Abruzzi 1952
Henri Cartier-Bresson Behind Saint-Lazare Train Station
Henri Cartier-Bresson (22 de agosto de 1908 – 3 de agosto de 20041 ) fue un célebre fotógrafo francés considerado por muchos el padre del fotorreportaje. Predicó siempre con la idea de atrapar el instante decisivo, versión traducida de sus "images à la sauvette", que vienen a significar con más precisión "imágenes a hurtadillas". Se trataba, pues, de poner la cabeza, el ojo y el corazón en el mismo momento en el que se desarrolla el clímax de una acción.
A lo largo de su carrera, tuvo la oportunidad de retratar a personajes de la talla de Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marie Curie, Édith Piaf, Fidel Castro y Ernesto "Che" Guevara. También cubrió importantes eventos, como la muerte de Gandhi, la Guerra Civil Española, donde filmó el documental sobre el bando republicano "Victorie de la vie", la SGM, en la que estuvo en la Unidad de Cine y Fotografía del ejército galo o la entrada triunfal de Mao Zedong a Pekín. Cartier-Bresson fue el primer periodista occidental que pudo visitar la Unión Soviética tras la muerte de Iósif Stalin.
Su obra fue expuesta, en el museo del Louvre, en París, en 1955.
Fue cofundador de la agencia Magnum.
Junto a su esposa, la también fotógrafa Martine Frank, creó en el año 2000 una fundación encargada de reunir sus mejores obras, situada en el barrio parisino de Montparnasse.
En 2003, Heinz Bütler dirigió la película suiza Henri Cartier-Bresson - Biographie eines Blicks, documental biográfico interpretado por el propio Cartier-Bresson además de Isabelle Huppert, entre otros.
Para algunos, Cartier-Bresson es una figura mítica en la fotografía del siglo XX. Uno de sus mejores biógrafos (Pierre Assouline) lo apelaría como «el ojo del siglo».
En el año 1982 recibió el Premio internacional de la fundación Hasselblad.
Biografía
Nació en Chanteloup-les-Vignes, a las afueras de París, el 22 de agosto de 1908.
Después de terminar sus estudios de pintura en 1927-1928 a cargo de André Lhote en Montparnasse y de frecuentar los círculos surrealistas parisinos, decide dedicarse a la fotografía. Es fotógrafo a sus 23 años en Costa de Marfil, cuando recogería sus primeras instantáneas con una Krauss de segunda mano. Publicaría su reportaje el año siguiente (1931). De regreso a Francia, en Marsella, adquirió una cámara Leica, la cual quedaría asociada con su persona. En 1947, él cofunda junto a Robert Capa, Bill Vandivert, David Seymour y George Rodger la agencia Magnum y a través de sus viajes por el mundo definiría la fotografía humanista: visitaría así pues África, México, y los Estados Unidos. En 1936 realizó un documental sobre los hospitales de la España republicana y se convertiría más tarde en el asistente del cineasta Jean Renoir.
Formado en la Escuela nacional superior de Bellas Artes, abandona finalmente la fotografía en1970 para dedicarse al dibujo. Un año antes de su muerte 2003, la Biblioteca Nacional de Francia le dedicaría una exposición retrospectiva, con Robert Delpire como comisario. Estos fondos son los que más tarde servirían para la apertura en el barrio parisino de Montparnasse de la fundación HCB, que asegura la buena conservación de su obra.
Falleció el 3 de agosto de 2004 en Montjustin, al suroeste de Francia.2
Filmografía
1937: (Victoria de la Vida) Victoire de la vie, Documental sobre los hospitales de España Republicana (49 min, Blanco y Negro)
1938: (España vivirá) L’Espagne Vivra, Documental sobre la guerra civil española y los años de postguerra (43 min, Blanco y Negro)
1945: (El Retorno) Le Retour, película sobre el retorno de los prisioneros después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial.
A lo largo de su carrera, tuvo la oportunidad de retratar a personajes de la talla de Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marie Curie, Édith Piaf, Fidel Castro y Ernesto "Che" Guevara. También cubrió importantes eventos, como la muerte de Gandhi, la Guerra Civil Española, donde filmó el documental sobre el bando republicano "Victorie de la vie", la SGM, en la que estuvo en la Unidad de Cine y Fotografía del ejército galo o la entrada triunfal de Mao Zedong a Pekín. Cartier-Bresson fue el primer periodista occidental que pudo visitar la Unión Soviética tras la muerte de Iósif Stalin.
Su obra fue expuesta, en el museo del Louvre, en París, en 1955.
Fue cofundador de la agencia Magnum.
Junto a su esposa, la también fotógrafa Martine Frank, creó en el año 2000 una fundación encargada de reunir sus mejores obras, situada en el barrio parisino de Montparnasse.
En 2003, Heinz Bütler dirigió la película suiza Henri Cartier-Bresson - Biographie eines Blicks, documental biográfico interpretado por el propio Cartier-Bresson además de Isabelle Huppert, entre otros.
Para algunos, Cartier-Bresson es una figura mítica en la fotografía del siglo XX. Uno de sus mejores biógrafos (Pierre Assouline) lo apelaría como «el ojo del siglo».
En el año 1982 recibió el Premio internacional de la fundación Hasselblad.
Biografía
Nació en Chanteloup-les-Vignes, a las afueras de París, el 22 de agosto de 1908.
Después de terminar sus estudios de pintura en 1927-1928 a cargo de André Lhote en Montparnasse y de frecuentar los círculos surrealistas parisinos, decide dedicarse a la fotografía. Es fotógrafo a sus 23 años en Costa de Marfil, cuando recogería sus primeras instantáneas con una Krauss de segunda mano. Publicaría su reportaje el año siguiente (1931). De regreso a Francia, en Marsella, adquirió una cámara Leica, la cual quedaría asociada con su persona. En 1947, él cofunda junto a Robert Capa, Bill Vandivert, David Seymour y George Rodger la agencia Magnum y a través de sus viajes por el mundo definiría la fotografía humanista: visitaría así pues África, México, y los Estados Unidos. En 1936 realizó un documental sobre los hospitales de la España republicana y se convertiría más tarde en el asistente del cineasta Jean Renoir.
Formado en la Escuela nacional superior de Bellas Artes, abandona finalmente la fotografía en1970 para dedicarse al dibujo. Un año antes de su muerte 2003, la Biblioteca Nacional de Francia le dedicaría una exposición retrospectiva, con Robert Delpire como comisario. Estos fondos son los que más tarde servirían para la apertura en el barrio parisino de Montparnasse de la fundación HCB, que asegura la buena conservación de su obra.
Falleció el 3 de agosto de 2004 en Montjustin, al suroeste de Francia.2
Filmografía
1937: (Victoria de la Vida) Victoire de la vie, Documental sobre los hospitales de España Republicana (49 min, Blanco y Negro)
1938: (España vivirá) L’Espagne Vivra, Documental sobre la guerra civil española y los años de postguerra (43 min, Blanco y Negro)
1945: (El Retorno) Le Retour, película sobre el retorno de los prisioneros después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial.
Henri Cartier-Bresson Iphnos Greece 1961
Henri Cartier-Bresson (August 22, 1908 – August 3, 2004) was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography. He helped develop the "street photography" or "life reportage" style that has influenced generations of photographers who followed.
Early life
Cartier-Bresson was born in Chanteloup-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne, France, the oldest of five children. His father was a wealthy textile manufacturer, whose Cartier-Bresson thread was a staple of French sewing kits. His mother's family were cotton merchants and landowners from Normandy, where he spent part of his childhood. The Cartier-Bresson family lived in a bourgeois neighborhood in Paris, near the Europe[where?] Bridge. They were able to provide him with financial support to develop his interests in photography in a more independent manner than many of his contemporaries. Cartier-Bresson also sketched in his spare time.
As a young boy, Cartier-Bresson owned a Box Brownie, using it for taking holiday snapshots; he later experimented with a 3×4 inch view camera. He was raised in a traditional French bourgeois fashion, required to address his parents using the formal vous rather than the familiar tu. His father assumed that his son would take up the family business, but the youth was strong-willed and upset by this prospect.
He attended École Fénelon, a Catholic school that prepared students to attend Lycée Condorcet. The proctor caught him reading a book by Rimbaud or Mallarmé, and reprimanded him: "Let's have no disorder in your studies!" Cartier-Bresson said, "He used the informal 'tu'-which usually meant you were about to get a good thrashing. But he went on: 'You're going to read in my office.' Well, that wasn't an offer he had to repeat."[1]
Studies painting
After unsuccessfully trying to learn music, as a boy Cartier-Bresson was introduced to oil painting by his uncle Louis, a gifted painter. Uncle Louis' painting lessons were cut short, when he died in World War I.
In 1927, at the age of 19, Cartier-Bresson entered a private art school and the Lhote Academy, the Parisian studio of the Cubist painter and sculptor André Lhote. Lhote's ambition was to integrate the Cubists' approach to reality with classical artistic forms; he wanted to link the French classical tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David to Modernism. Cartier-Bresson also studied painting with society portraitist Jacques Émile Blanche. During this period, he read Dostoevsky, Schopenhauer, Rimbaud, Nietzsche, Mallarmé, Freud, Proust, Joyce, Hegel, Engels and Marx. Lhote took his pupils to the Louvre to study classical artists and to Parisian galleries to study contemporary art. Cartier-Bresson's interest in modern art was combined with an admiration for the works of the Renaissance—of masterpieces of Jan van Eyck, Paolo Uccello, Masaccio and Piero della Francesca. Cartier-Bresson often regarded Lhote as his teacher of "photography without a camera."
Experiments with photography
Although Cartier-Bresson gradually began to be restless under Lhote's "rule-laden" approach to art, his rigorous theoretical training would later help him to confront and resolve problems of artistic form and composition in photography. In the 1920s, schools of photographic realism were popping up throughout Europe, but each had a different view on the direction photography should take. The photography revolution had begun: "Crush tradition! Photograph things as they are!"[citation needed] The Surrealist movement (founded in 1924) was a catalyst for this paradigm shift. Cartier-Bresson began socializing with the Surrealists at the Café Cyrano, in the Place Blanche. He met a number of the movement's leading protagonists, and was particularly drawn to the Surrealist movement's linking of the subconscious and the immediate to their work. The historian Peter Galassi explains:
The Surrealists approached photography in the same way that Aragon and Breton...approached the street: with a voracious appetite for the usual and unusual...The Surrealists recognized in plain photographic fact an essential quality that had been excluded from prior theories of photographic realism. They saw that ordinary photographs, especially when uprooted from their practical functions, contain a wealth of unintended, unpredictable meanings.[2]
Cartier-Bresson matured artistically in this stormy cultural and political environment. He was aware of the concepts and theories mentioned, but could not find a way of expressing this imaginatively in his paintings. He was very frustrated with his experiments and subsequently destroyed the majority of his early works.
From 1928 to 1929, Cartier-Bresson attended the University of Cambridge, where he studied English, art and literature, and became bilingual. In 1930, stationed at Le Bourget, near Paris, he completed his mandatory service in the French Army. He remembered, "And I had quite a hard time of it, too, because I was toting Joyce under my arm and a Lebel rifle on my shoulder."[1]
Affair with Caresse Crosby
In 1929, Cartier-Bresson's air squadron commandant placed him under house arrest for hunting without a license. Cartier-Bresson met American expatriate Harry Crosby at Le Bourget, who persuaded the officer to release Cartier-Bresson into his custody for a few days. Finding their mutual interest in photography, and they spent their time together taking and printing pictures at Crosby's home, Le Moulin du Soleil (The Sun Mill), near Paris in Ermenonville, France.[3][4]:163 Crosby later said Cartier-Bresson "looked like a fledgling, shy and frail, and mild as whey." Embracing the open sexuality offered by Crosby and his wife Caresse, Cartier-Bresson fell into an intense sexual relationship with her.[5]
Early life
Cartier-Bresson was born in Chanteloup-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne, France, the oldest of five children. His father was a wealthy textile manufacturer, whose Cartier-Bresson thread was a staple of French sewing kits. His mother's family were cotton merchants and landowners from Normandy, where he spent part of his childhood. The Cartier-Bresson family lived in a bourgeois neighborhood in Paris, near the Europe[where?] Bridge. They were able to provide him with financial support to develop his interests in photography in a more independent manner than many of his contemporaries. Cartier-Bresson also sketched in his spare time.
As a young boy, Cartier-Bresson owned a Box Brownie, using it for taking holiday snapshots; he later experimented with a 3×4 inch view camera. He was raised in a traditional French bourgeois fashion, required to address his parents using the formal vous rather than the familiar tu. His father assumed that his son would take up the family business, but the youth was strong-willed and upset by this prospect.
He attended École Fénelon, a Catholic school that prepared students to attend Lycée Condorcet. The proctor caught him reading a book by Rimbaud or Mallarmé, and reprimanded him: "Let's have no disorder in your studies!" Cartier-Bresson said, "He used the informal 'tu'-which usually meant you were about to get a good thrashing. But he went on: 'You're going to read in my office.' Well, that wasn't an offer he had to repeat."[1]
Studies painting
After unsuccessfully trying to learn music, as a boy Cartier-Bresson was introduced to oil painting by his uncle Louis, a gifted painter. Uncle Louis' painting lessons were cut short, when he died in World War I.
In 1927, at the age of 19, Cartier-Bresson entered a private art school and the Lhote Academy, the Parisian studio of the Cubist painter and sculptor André Lhote. Lhote's ambition was to integrate the Cubists' approach to reality with classical artistic forms; he wanted to link the French classical tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David to Modernism. Cartier-Bresson also studied painting with society portraitist Jacques Émile Blanche. During this period, he read Dostoevsky, Schopenhauer, Rimbaud, Nietzsche, Mallarmé, Freud, Proust, Joyce, Hegel, Engels and Marx. Lhote took his pupils to the Louvre to study classical artists and to Parisian galleries to study contemporary art. Cartier-Bresson's interest in modern art was combined with an admiration for the works of the Renaissance—of masterpieces of Jan van Eyck, Paolo Uccello, Masaccio and Piero della Francesca. Cartier-Bresson often regarded Lhote as his teacher of "photography without a camera."
Experiments with photography
Although Cartier-Bresson gradually began to be restless under Lhote's "rule-laden" approach to art, his rigorous theoretical training would later help him to confront and resolve problems of artistic form and composition in photography. In the 1920s, schools of photographic realism were popping up throughout Europe, but each had a different view on the direction photography should take. The photography revolution had begun: "Crush tradition! Photograph things as they are!"[citation needed] The Surrealist movement (founded in 1924) was a catalyst for this paradigm shift. Cartier-Bresson began socializing with the Surrealists at the Café Cyrano, in the Place Blanche. He met a number of the movement's leading protagonists, and was particularly drawn to the Surrealist movement's linking of the subconscious and the immediate to their work. The historian Peter Galassi explains:
The Surrealists approached photography in the same way that Aragon and Breton...approached the street: with a voracious appetite for the usual and unusual...The Surrealists recognized in plain photographic fact an essential quality that had been excluded from prior theories of photographic realism. They saw that ordinary photographs, especially when uprooted from their practical functions, contain a wealth of unintended, unpredictable meanings.[2]
Cartier-Bresson matured artistically in this stormy cultural and political environment. He was aware of the concepts and theories mentioned, but could not find a way of expressing this imaginatively in his paintings. He was very frustrated with his experiments and subsequently destroyed the majority of his early works.
From 1928 to 1929, Cartier-Bresson attended the University of Cambridge, where he studied English, art and literature, and became bilingual. In 1930, stationed at Le Bourget, near Paris, he completed his mandatory service in the French Army. He remembered, "And I had quite a hard time of it, too, because I was toting Joyce under my arm and a Lebel rifle on my shoulder."[1]
Affair with Caresse Crosby
In 1929, Cartier-Bresson's air squadron commandant placed him under house arrest for hunting without a license. Cartier-Bresson met American expatriate Harry Crosby at Le Bourget, who persuaded the officer to release Cartier-Bresson into his custody for a few days. Finding their mutual interest in photography, and they spent their time together taking and printing pictures at Crosby's home, Le Moulin du Soleil (The Sun Mill), near Paris in Ermenonville, France.[3][4]:163 Crosby later said Cartier-Bresson "looked like a fledgling, shy and frail, and mild as whey." Embracing the open sexuality offered by Crosby and his wife Caresse, Cartier-Bresson fell into an intense sexual relationship with her.[5]
Escapes to Africa
Two years after Harry Crosby committed suicide, Cartier-Bresson's affair with Caresse Crosby ended in 1931, leaving him broken hearted. During his enlistment he had read Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and decided to seek escape and adventure on the Côte d'Ivoire in French colonial Africa.[5] About abandoning painting, he wrote, "I left Lhote's studio because I did not want to enter into that systematic spirit. I wanted to be myself. To paint and to change the world counted for more than everything in my life."[citation needed] He survived by shooting game and selling it to local villagers. From hunting, he learned methods which he later used in photography. On the Côte d'Ivoire, he contracted blackwater fever, which nearly killed him. While still feverish, he sent instructions to his grandfather for his own funeral, asking to be buried in Normandy, at the edge of the Eawy forest while Debussy's String Quartet was played. An uncle wrote back, "Your grandfather finds all that too expensive. It would be preferable that you return first."[citation needed] Although Cartier-Bresson took a portable camera (smaller than a Brownie Box) to Côte d'Ivoire, only seven photographs survived the tropics.[6]
Turning from painting to photography
Returning to France, Cartier-Bresson recuperated in Marseille in late 1931 and deepened his relationship with the Surrealists. He became inspired by a 1930 photograph by Hungarian photojournalist Martin Munkacsi showing three naked young African boys, caught in near-silhouette, running into the surf of Lake Tanganyika. Titled Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika, this captured the freedom, grace and spontaneity of their movement and their joy at being alive. Cartier-Bresson said:
The only thing which completely was an amazement to me and brought me to photography was the work of Munkacsi. When I saw the photograph of Munkacsi of the black kids running in a wave I couldn't believe such a thing could be caught with the camera. I said damn it, I took my camera and went out into the street."[citation needed]
That photograph inspired him to stop painting and to take up photography seriously. He explained, "I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant."[citation needed] He acquired the Leica camera with 50 mm lens in Marseilles that would accompany him for many years. He described the Leica as an extension of his eye.[citation needed] The anonymity that the small camera gave him in a crowd or during an intimate moment was essential in overcoming the formal and unnatural behavior of those who were aware of being photographed. He enhanced his anonymity by painting all shiny parts of the Leica with black paint. The Leica opened up new possibilities in photography — the ability to capture the world in its actual state of movement and transformation. He said, "I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, ready to 'trap' life."[citation needed] Restless, he photographed in Berlin, Brussels, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Madrid. His photographs were first exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1932, and subsequently at the Ateneo Club in Madrid. In 1934 in Mexico, he shared an exhibition with Manuel Alvarez Bravo. In the beginning, he did not photograph much in his native France. It would be years before he photographed there extensively.
In 1934 Cartier-Bresson met a young Polish intellectual, a photographer named David Szymin who was called "Chim" because his name was difficult to pronounce. Szymin later changed his name to David Seymour. The two had much in common culturally. Through Chim, Cartier-Bresson met a Hungarian photographer named Endré Friedmann, who later changed his name to Robert Capa. The three shared a studio in the early 1930s and Capa mentored Cartier-Bresson, "Don't keep the label of a surrealist photographer. Be a photojournalist. If not you will fall into mannerism. Keep surrealism in your little heart, my dear. Don't fidget. Get moving!"[citation needed]
Exhibits in United States
Cartier-Bresson traveled to the United States in 1935 with an invitation to exhibit his work at New York's Julien Levy Gallery. He shared display space with fellow photographers Walker Evans and Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Carmel Snow of Harper's Bazaar, gave him a fashion assignment, but he fared poorly since he had no idea how to direct or interact with the models. Nevertheless, Snow was the first American editor to publish Cartier-Bresson's photographs in a magazine. While in New York, he met photographer Paul Strand, who did camerawork for the Depression-era documentary The Plow That Broke the Plains.
Filmmaking
When he returned to France, Cartier-Bresson applied for a job with renowned French film director Jean Renoir. He acted in Renoir's 1936 film Partie de campagne and in the 1939 La Règle du jeu, for which he played a butler and served as second assistant. Renoir made Cartier-Bresson act so he could understand how it felt to be on the other side of the camera. Cartier-Bresson also helped Renoir make a film for the Communist party on the 200 families, including his own, who ran France. During the Spanish civil war, Cartier-Bresson co-directed an anti-fascist film with Herbert Kline, to promote the Republican medical services.
Photojournalism start
Cartier-Bresson's first photojournalist photos to be published came in 1937 when he covered the coronation of King George VI, for the French weekly Regards. He focused on the new monarch's adoring subjects lining the London streets, and took no pictures of the king. His photo credit read "Cartier", as he was hesitant to use his full family name.
Marriage
In 1937, Cartier-Bresson married a Javanese dancer, Ratna Mohini. They lived in a fourth-floor servants' flat at in Paris at 19, rue Danielle Casanova, a large studio with a small bedroom, kitchen and bathroom where Cartier-Bresson developed film. Between 1937 and 1939 Cartier-Bresson worked as a photographer for the French Communists' evening paper, Ce Soir. With Chim and Capa, Cartier-Bresson was a leftist, but he did not join the French Communist party.
Service in World War II
When World War II broke out in September 1939, he joined the French Army as a Corporal in the Film and Photo unit. During the Battle of France, in June 1940 at St. Dié in the Vosges Mountains, he was captured by German soldiers and spent 35 months in prisoner-of-war camps doing forced labor under the Nazis. As Cartier-Bresson put it, he was forced to perform "thirty-two different kinds of hard manual labor."[citation needed] He worked "as slowly and as poorly as possible."[citation needed] He twice tried and failed to escape from the prison camp, and was punished by solitary confinement. His third escape was successful and he hid on a farm in Touraine before getting false papers that allowed him to travel in France. In France, he worked for the underground, aiding other escapees and working secretly with other photographers to cover the Occupation and then the Liberation of France. In 1943, he dug up his beloved Leica camera, which he had buried in farmland near Vosges. At the end of the war he was asked by the American Office of War Information to make a documentary, Le Retour (The Return) about returning French prisoners and displaced persons.
Toward the end of the War, rumors had reached America that Cartier-Bresson had been killed. His film on returning war refugees (released in the United States in 1947) spurred a retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) instead of the posthumous show that MoMA had been preparing. The show debuted in 1947 together with the publication of his first book, The Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Lincoln Kirstein and Beaumont Newhall wrote the book's text.
Forms Magnum Photos
In spring 1947, Cartier-Bresson, with Robert Capa, David Seymour, William Vandivert and George Rodger founded Magnum Photos. Capa's brainchild, Magnum was a cooperative picture agency owned by its members. The team split photo assignments among the members. Rodger, who had quit Life in London after covering World War II, would cover Africa and the Middle East. Chim, who spoke most European languages, would work in Europe. Cartier-Bresson would be assigned to India and China. Vandivert, who had also left Life, would work in America, and Capa would work anywhere that had an assignment. Maria Eisner managed the Paris office and Rita Vandivert, Vandivert's wife, managed the New York office and became Magnum's first president.
Magnum's mission was to "feel the pulse" of the times and some of its first projects were People Live Everywhere, Youth of the World, Women of the World and The Child Generation. Magnum aimed to use photography in the service of humanity, and provided arresting, widely viewed images.
The Decisive Moment
Cartier-Bresson achieved international recognition for his coverage of Gandhi's funeral in India in 1948 and the last (1949) stage of the Chinese Civil War. He covered the last six months of the Kuomintang administration and the first six months of the Maoist People's Republic. He also photographed the last surviving Imperial eunuchs in Beijing, as the city was falling to the communists. From China, he went on to Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), where he documented the gaining of independence from the Dutch.
In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book Images à la sauvette, whose English edition was titled The Decisive Moment. It included a portfolio of 126 of his photos from the East and the West. The book's cover was drawn by Henri Matisse. For his 4,500-word philosophical preface, Cartier-Bresson took his keynote text from the 17th century Cardinal de Retz: "Il n'y a rien dans ce monde qui n'ait un moment decisif" ("There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment"). Cartier-Bresson applied this to his photographic style. He said: "Photographier: c'est dans un même instant et en une fraction de seconde reconnaître un fait et l'organisation rigoureuse de formes perçues visuellement qui expriment et signifient ce fait" ("Photography is simultaneously and instantaneously the recognition of a fact and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that express and signify that fact").[citation needed]
Both titles came from publishers. Tériade, the Greek-born French publisher whom Cartier-Bresson idolized,[peacock term] gave the book its French title, Images à la Sauvette, which can loosely be translated as "images on the run" or "stolen images." Dick Simon of Simon & Schuster came up with the English title The Decisive Moment. Margot Shore, Magnum's Paris bureau chief, did the English translation of Cartier-Bresson's French preface.
"Photography is not like painting," Cartier-Bresson told the Washington Post in 1957. "There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. 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. That is the moment the photographer is creative," he said. "Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever."[7]
Cartier-Bresson held his first exhibition in France at the Pavillon de Marsan in the Louvre in 1955.
Two years after Harry Crosby committed suicide, Cartier-Bresson's affair with Caresse Crosby ended in 1931, leaving him broken hearted. During his enlistment he had read Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and decided to seek escape and adventure on the Côte d'Ivoire in French colonial Africa.[5] About abandoning painting, he wrote, "I left Lhote's studio because I did not want to enter into that systematic spirit. I wanted to be myself. To paint and to change the world counted for more than everything in my life."[citation needed] He survived by shooting game and selling it to local villagers. From hunting, he learned methods which he later used in photography. On the Côte d'Ivoire, he contracted blackwater fever, which nearly killed him. While still feverish, he sent instructions to his grandfather for his own funeral, asking to be buried in Normandy, at the edge of the Eawy forest while Debussy's String Quartet was played. An uncle wrote back, "Your grandfather finds all that too expensive. It would be preferable that you return first."[citation needed] Although Cartier-Bresson took a portable camera (smaller than a Brownie Box) to Côte d'Ivoire, only seven photographs survived the tropics.[6]
Turning from painting to photography
Returning to France, Cartier-Bresson recuperated in Marseille in late 1931 and deepened his relationship with the Surrealists. He became inspired by a 1930 photograph by Hungarian photojournalist Martin Munkacsi showing three naked young African boys, caught in near-silhouette, running into the surf of Lake Tanganyika. Titled Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika, this captured the freedom, grace and spontaneity of their movement and their joy at being alive. Cartier-Bresson said:
The only thing which completely was an amazement to me and brought me to photography was the work of Munkacsi. When I saw the photograph of Munkacsi of the black kids running in a wave I couldn't believe such a thing could be caught with the camera. I said damn it, I took my camera and went out into the street."[citation needed]
That photograph inspired him to stop painting and to take up photography seriously. He explained, "I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant."[citation needed] He acquired the Leica camera with 50 mm lens in Marseilles that would accompany him for many years. He described the Leica as an extension of his eye.[citation needed] The anonymity that the small camera gave him in a crowd or during an intimate moment was essential in overcoming the formal and unnatural behavior of those who were aware of being photographed. He enhanced his anonymity by painting all shiny parts of the Leica with black paint. The Leica opened up new possibilities in photography — the ability to capture the world in its actual state of movement and transformation. He said, "I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, ready to 'trap' life."[citation needed] Restless, he photographed in Berlin, Brussels, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Madrid. His photographs were first exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1932, and subsequently at the Ateneo Club in Madrid. In 1934 in Mexico, he shared an exhibition with Manuel Alvarez Bravo. In the beginning, he did not photograph much in his native France. It would be years before he photographed there extensively.
In 1934 Cartier-Bresson met a young Polish intellectual, a photographer named David Szymin who was called "Chim" because his name was difficult to pronounce. Szymin later changed his name to David Seymour. The two had much in common culturally. Through Chim, Cartier-Bresson met a Hungarian photographer named Endré Friedmann, who later changed his name to Robert Capa. The three shared a studio in the early 1930s and Capa mentored Cartier-Bresson, "Don't keep the label of a surrealist photographer. Be a photojournalist. If not you will fall into mannerism. Keep surrealism in your little heart, my dear. Don't fidget. Get moving!"[citation needed]
Exhibits in United States
Cartier-Bresson traveled to the United States in 1935 with an invitation to exhibit his work at New York's Julien Levy Gallery. He shared display space with fellow photographers Walker Evans and Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Carmel Snow of Harper's Bazaar, gave him a fashion assignment, but he fared poorly since he had no idea how to direct or interact with the models. Nevertheless, Snow was the first American editor to publish Cartier-Bresson's photographs in a magazine. While in New York, he met photographer Paul Strand, who did camerawork for the Depression-era documentary The Plow That Broke the Plains.
Filmmaking
When he returned to France, Cartier-Bresson applied for a job with renowned French film director Jean Renoir. He acted in Renoir's 1936 film Partie de campagne and in the 1939 La Règle du jeu, for which he played a butler and served as second assistant. Renoir made Cartier-Bresson act so he could understand how it felt to be on the other side of the camera. Cartier-Bresson also helped Renoir make a film for the Communist party on the 200 families, including his own, who ran France. During the Spanish civil war, Cartier-Bresson co-directed an anti-fascist film with Herbert Kline, to promote the Republican medical services.
Photojournalism start
Cartier-Bresson's first photojournalist photos to be published came in 1937 when he covered the coronation of King George VI, for the French weekly Regards. He focused on the new monarch's adoring subjects lining the London streets, and took no pictures of the king. His photo credit read "Cartier", as he was hesitant to use his full family name.
Marriage
In 1937, Cartier-Bresson married a Javanese dancer, Ratna Mohini. They lived in a fourth-floor servants' flat at in Paris at 19, rue Danielle Casanova, a large studio with a small bedroom, kitchen and bathroom where Cartier-Bresson developed film. Between 1937 and 1939 Cartier-Bresson worked as a photographer for the French Communists' evening paper, Ce Soir. With Chim and Capa, Cartier-Bresson was a leftist, but he did not join the French Communist party.
Service in World War II
When World War II broke out in September 1939, he joined the French Army as a Corporal in the Film and Photo unit. During the Battle of France, in June 1940 at St. Dié in the Vosges Mountains, he was captured by German soldiers and spent 35 months in prisoner-of-war camps doing forced labor under the Nazis. As Cartier-Bresson put it, he was forced to perform "thirty-two different kinds of hard manual labor."[citation needed] He worked "as slowly and as poorly as possible."[citation needed] He twice tried and failed to escape from the prison camp, and was punished by solitary confinement. His third escape was successful and he hid on a farm in Touraine before getting false papers that allowed him to travel in France. In France, he worked for the underground, aiding other escapees and working secretly with other photographers to cover the Occupation and then the Liberation of France. In 1943, he dug up his beloved Leica camera, which he had buried in farmland near Vosges. At the end of the war he was asked by the American Office of War Information to make a documentary, Le Retour (The Return) about returning French prisoners and displaced persons.
Toward the end of the War, rumors had reached America that Cartier-Bresson had been killed. His film on returning war refugees (released in the United States in 1947) spurred a retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) instead of the posthumous show that MoMA had been preparing. The show debuted in 1947 together with the publication of his first book, The Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Lincoln Kirstein and Beaumont Newhall wrote the book's text.
Forms Magnum Photos
In spring 1947, Cartier-Bresson, with Robert Capa, David Seymour, William Vandivert and George Rodger founded Magnum Photos. Capa's brainchild, Magnum was a cooperative picture agency owned by its members. The team split photo assignments among the members. Rodger, who had quit Life in London after covering World War II, would cover Africa and the Middle East. Chim, who spoke most European languages, would work in Europe. Cartier-Bresson would be assigned to India and China. Vandivert, who had also left Life, would work in America, and Capa would work anywhere that had an assignment. Maria Eisner managed the Paris office and Rita Vandivert, Vandivert's wife, managed the New York office and became Magnum's first president.
Magnum's mission was to "feel the pulse" of the times and some of its first projects were People Live Everywhere, Youth of the World, Women of the World and The Child Generation. Magnum aimed to use photography in the service of humanity, and provided arresting, widely viewed images.
The Decisive Moment
Cartier-Bresson achieved international recognition for his coverage of Gandhi's funeral in India in 1948 and the last (1949) stage of the Chinese Civil War. He covered the last six months of the Kuomintang administration and the first six months of the Maoist People's Republic. He also photographed the last surviving Imperial eunuchs in Beijing, as the city was falling to the communists. From China, he went on to Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), where he documented the gaining of independence from the Dutch.
In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book Images à la sauvette, whose English edition was titled The Decisive Moment. It included a portfolio of 126 of his photos from the East and the West. The book's cover was drawn by Henri Matisse. For his 4,500-word philosophical preface, Cartier-Bresson took his keynote text from the 17th century Cardinal de Retz: "Il n'y a rien dans ce monde qui n'ait un moment decisif" ("There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment"). Cartier-Bresson applied this to his photographic style. He said: "Photographier: c'est dans un même instant et en une fraction de seconde reconnaître un fait et l'organisation rigoureuse de formes perçues visuellement qui expriment et signifient ce fait" ("Photography is simultaneously and instantaneously the recognition of a fact and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that express and signify that fact").[citation needed]
Both titles came from publishers. Tériade, the Greek-born French publisher whom Cartier-Bresson idolized,[peacock term] gave the book its French title, Images à la Sauvette, which can loosely be translated as "images on the run" or "stolen images." Dick Simon of Simon & Schuster came up with the English title The Decisive Moment. Margot Shore, Magnum's Paris bureau chief, did the English translation of Cartier-Bresson's French preface.
"Photography is not like painting," Cartier-Bresson told the Washington Post in 1957. "There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. 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. That is the moment the photographer is creative," he said. "Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever."[7]
Cartier-Bresson held his first exhibition in France at the Pavillon de Marsan in the Louvre in 1955.
Later career
Cartier-Bresson's photography took him to many places, including China, Mexico, Canada, the United States, India, Japan, and the Soviet Union. He became the first Western photographer to photograph "freely" in the post-war Soviet Union.
In 1962, on behalf of Vogue he went to Sardinia for about twenty days. There he visited Nuoro, Oliena, Orgosolo Mamoiada Desulo, Orosei, Cala Gonone, Orani (hosted by his friend Costantino Nivola), San Leonardo di Siete Fuentes, and Cagliari.[8]
Cartier-Bresson withdrew as a principal of Magnum (which still distributed his photographs) in 1966 to concentrate on portraiture and landscapes.
In 1967, he was divorced from his first wife of 30 years, Ratna "Elie". In 1968, he began to turn away from photography and return to his passion for drawing and painting. He admitted that perhaps he had said all he could through photography. He married Magnum photographer Martine Franck, thirty years younger than himself, in 1970.[9] The couple had a daughter, Mélanie, in May 1972.
Cartier-Bresson retired from photography in the early 1970s, and by 1975 no longer took pictures other than an occasional private portrait; he said he kept his camera in a safe at his house and rarely took it out. He returned to drawing and painting. After a lifetime of developing his artistic vision through photography, he said, "All I care about these days is painting—photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing."[citation needed] He held his first exhibition of drawings at the Carlton Gallery in New York in 1975.
Death and legacy
Cartier-Bresson died in Montjustin (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France) on August 3, 2004, at 95. No cause of death was announced. He was buried in the local cemetery and survived by his wife, Martine Franck, and daughter, Mélanie.
Cartier-Bresson spent more than three decades on assignment for Life and other journals. He traveled without bounds, documenting some of the great upheavals of the 20th century — the Spanish civil war, the liberation of Paris in 1944, the 1968 student rebellion in Paris, the fall of the Kuomintang in China to the communists, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the Berlin Wall, and the deserts of Egypt. And along the way he paused to document portraits of Camus, Picasso, Colette, Matisse, Pound and Giacometti. But many of his most renowned photographs, such as Behind the Gare St. Lazare, are of ordinary daily life, seemingly unimportant moments captured and then gone.
Cartier-Bresson was a photographer who hated to be photographed and treasured his privacy above all. Photographs of Cartier-Bresson do exist, but they are scant. When he accepted an honorary degree from Oxford University in 1975, he held a paper in front of his face to avoid being photographed.[1] In a Charlie Rose interview in 2000, Cartier-Bresson noted that it wasn't necessarily that he hated to be photographed, but it was that he was embarrassed by the notion of being photographed for being famous.[10]
Cartier-Bresson believed that what went on beneath the surface was nobody's business but his own. He did recall that he once confided his innermost secrets to a Paris taxi driver, certain that he would never meet the man again.
In 2003, he created the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation with his wife and daughter to preserve and share his legacy.
Technique
Cartier-Bresson exclusively used Leica 35 mm rangefinder cameras equipped with normal 50 mm lenses or occasionally a wide-angle for landscapes.[11] He often wrapped black tape around the camera's chrome body to make it less conspicuous. With fast black and white films and sharp lenses, he was able to photograph almost by stealth to capture the events. No longer bound by a huge 4×5 press camera or an awkward medium format twin-lens reflex camera, miniature-format cameras gave Cartier-Bresson what he called "the velvet hand [and] the hawk's eye."[citation needed] He never photographed with flash, a practice he saw as "[i]mpolite...like coming to a concert with a pistol in your hand."[11]
He believed in composing his photographs in the viewfinder, not in the darkroom. He showcased this belief by having nearly all his photographs printed only at full-frame and completely free of any cropping or other darkroom manipulation.[1] Indeed, he emphasized that his prints were not cropped by insisting they include the first millimetre or so of the unexposed clear negative around the image area resulting, after printing, in a black border around the positive image.
Cartier-Bresson worked exclusively in black and white, other than a few unsuccessful attempts in color. He disliked developing or making his own prints.[1] He said: "I've never been interested in the process of photography, never, never. Right from the beginning. For me, photography with a small camera like the Leica is an instant drawing."[12]
He started the tradition of testing new camera lenses by taking photographs of ducks in urban parks. He never published the images but referred to them as 'my only superstition' as he considered it a 'baptism' of the lens.[13]
Cartier-Bresson is regarded as one of the art world's most unassuming personalities. He disliked publicity and exhibited a ferocious shyness since his days in hiding from the Nazis during World War II. Although he took many famous portraits, his own face was little known to the world at large (which presumably had the advantage of allowing him to work on the street in peace). He dismissed others' applications of the term "art" to his photographs, which he thought were merely his gut reactions to moments in time that he had happened upon.
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... . In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif.
—Henri Cartier-Bresson[14]
Works
Bibliography
1947: The Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Text by Lincoln Kirstein, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
1952: The Decisive Moment. Texts and photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cover by Henri Matisse. Simon & Schuster, New York. French edition
1954: Les Danses à Bali. Texts by Antonin Artaud on Balinese theater and commentary by Béryl de Zoete Delpire, Paris. German edition
1955: The Europeans. Text and photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cover by Joan Miró. Simon & Schuster, New York. French edition
1955: People of Moscow. Thames and Hudson, London. French, German and Italian editions
1956: China in Transition. Thames and Hudson, London. French, German and Italian editions
1958: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Fotografie. Text by Anna Farova. Statni nakladatelstvi krasné, Prague and Bratislava.
1963: Photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Grossman Publisher, New York. French, English, Japanese and Swiss editions
1964: China. Photographs and notes on fifteen months spent in China. Text by Barbara Miller. Bantam Books, New York. French edition
1966: Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art. Text by Jean-Pierre Montier. Translated from the French L'Art sans art d'Henri Cartier-Bresson by Ruth Taylor. Bulfinch Press, New York.
1968: The World of HCB. Viking Press, New York. French, German and Swiss editions
1969: Man and Machine. Commissioned by IBM. French, German, Italian and Spanish editions
1970: France. Text by François Nourissier. Thames and Hudson, London. French and German editions
1972: The Face of Asia. Introduction by Robert Shaplen. Published by John Weatherhill (New York and Tokyo) and Orientations Ltd. (Hong Kong). French edition
1973: About Russia. Thames and Hudson, London. French, German and Swiss editions
1976: Henri Cartier-Bresson. Texts by Henri Cartier-Bresson. History of Photography Series. History of Photography Series. French, German, Italian, Japanese and Italian editions
1979: Henri Cartier-Bresson Photographer. Text by Yves Bonnefoy. Bulfinch, New York. French, English, German, Japanese and Italian editions
1983: Henri Cartier-Bresson. Ritratti. Texts by André Pieyre de Mandiargues and Ferdinando Scianna. Coll. " I Grandi Fotografi ". Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri, Milan. English and Spanish editions
1985:
Henri Cartier-Bresson en Inde. Introduction de Satyajit Ray, photographies et notes d'Henri Cartier-Bresson. Texte d'Yves Véquaud. Centre National de la Photographie, Paris. Editions anglaise
Photoportraits. Texts by André Pieyre de Mandiargues. Thames and Hudson, London. French and German editions
1987:
Henri Cartier-Bresson. The Early Work. Texts by Peter Galassi. Museum of Modern Art, New York. French edition
Henri Cartier-Bresson in India. Introduction by Satyajit Ray, photographs and notes by Henri Cartier-Bresson, texts by Yves Véquaud. Thames and Hudson, London. French edition
1989:
L'Autre Chine. Introduction by Robert Guillain. Collection Photo Notes. Centre National de la Photographie, Paris
Line by Line. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s drawings. Introduction by Jean Clair and John Russell. Thames and Hudson, London. French and German editions
1991:
America in Passing. Introduction by Gilles Mora. Bulfinch, New York. French, English, German, Italian, Portuguese and Danish editions
Alberto Giacometti photographié par Henri Cartier-Bresson. Texts by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Louis Clayeux. Franco Sciardelli, Milan
1994:
A propos de Paris. Texts by Véra Feyder and André Pieyre de Mandiargues. Thames and Hudson, London. French, German and Japanese editions
Double regard. Drawings and photographs. Texts by Jean Leymarie. Amiens : Le Nyctalope. French and English editions
Mexican Notebooks 1934–1964. Text by Carlos Fuentes. Thames and Hudson, London. French, Italian, and German editions
L'Art sans art. Texte de Jean-Pierre Montier. Editions Flammarion, Paris. Editions allemande, anglaise et italienne
1996: L'Imaginaire d'après nature. Textes de Henri Cartier-Bresson. Fata Morgana, Paris. Editions allemande et américaine
1997: Europeans. Texts by Jean Clair. Thames and Hudson, London. French, German, Italian and Portuguese editions
1998: Tête à tête. Texts by Ernst H. Gombrich. Thames & Hudson, London. French, German, Italian and Portuguese editions
1999: The Mind's Eye. Texts by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Aperture, New York. French and German editions
2001: Landscape Townscape. Texts by Erik Orsenna and Gérard Macé. Thames and Hudson, London. French, German and Italian editions
2003: The Man, the Image and the World. Texts by Philippe Arbaizar, Jean Clair, Claude Cookman, Robert Delpire, Jean Leymarie, Jean-Noel Jeanneney, Serge Toubiana. Thames and Hudson, London 2003. German, French, Korean, Italian and Spanish editions.
2006: An Inner SIlence: The portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Texts by Agnès Sire and Jean-Luc Nancy. Thames and Hudson, New York.
Cartier-Bresson's photography took him to many places, including China, Mexico, Canada, the United States, India, Japan, and the Soviet Union. He became the first Western photographer to photograph "freely" in the post-war Soviet Union.
In 1962, on behalf of Vogue he went to Sardinia for about twenty days. There he visited Nuoro, Oliena, Orgosolo Mamoiada Desulo, Orosei, Cala Gonone, Orani (hosted by his friend Costantino Nivola), San Leonardo di Siete Fuentes, and Cagliari.[8]
Cartier-Bresson withdrew as a principal of Magnum (which still distributed his photographs) in 1966 to concentrate on portraiture and landscapes.
In 1967, he was divorced from his first wife of 30 years, Ratna "Elie". In 1968, he began to turn away from photography and return to his passion for drawing and painting. He admitted that perhaps he had said all he could through photography. He married Magnum photographer Martine Franck, thirty years younger than himself, in 1970.[9] The couple had a daughter, Mélanie, in May 1972.
Cartier-Bresson retired from photography in the early 1970s, and by 1975 no longer took pictures other than an occasional private portrait; he said he kept his camera in a safe at his house and rarely took it out. He returned to drawing and painting. After a lifetime of developing his artistic vision through photography, he said, "All I care about these days is painting—photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing."[citation needed] He held his first exhibition of drawings at the Carlton Gallery in New York in 1975.
Death and legacy
Cartier-Bresson died in Montjustin (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France) on August 3, 2004, at 95. No cause of death was announced. He was buried in the local cemetery and survived by his wife, Martine Franck, and daughter, Mélanie.
Cartier-Bresson spent more than three decades on assignment for Life and other journals. He traveled without bounds, documenting some of the great upheavals of the 20th century — the Spanish civil war, the liberation of Paris in 1944, the 1968 student rebellion in Paris, the fall of the Kuomintang in China to the communists, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the Berlin Wall, and the deserts of Egypt. And along the way he paused to document portraits of Camus, Picasso, Colette, Matisse, Pound and Giacometti. But many of his most renowned photographs, such as Behind the Gare St. Lazare, are of ordinary daily life, seemingly unimportant moments captured and then gone.
Cartier-Bresson was a photographer who hated to be photographed and treasured his privacy above all. Photographs of Cartier-Bresson do exist, but they are scant. When he accepted an honorary degree from Oxford University in 1975, he held a paper in front of his face to avoid being photographed.[1] In a Charlie Rose interview in 2000, Cartier-Bresson noted that it wasn't necessarily that he hated to be photographed, but it was that he was embarrassed by the notion of being photographed for being famous.[10]
Cartier-Bresson believed that what went on beneath the surface was nobody's business but his own. He did recall that he once confided his innermost secrets to a Paris taxi driver, certain that he would never meet the man again.
In 2003, he created the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation with his wife and daughter to preserve and share his legacy.
Technique
Cartier-Bresson exclusively used Leica 35 mm rangefinder cameras equipped with normal 50 mm lenses or occasionally a wide-angle for landscapes.[11] He often wrapped black tape around the camera's chrome body to make it less conspicuous. With fast black and white films and sharp lenses, he was able to photograph almost by stealth to capture the events. No longer bound by a huge 4×5 press camera or an awkward medium format twin-lens reflex camera, miniature-format cameras gave Cartier-Bresson what he called "the velvet hand [and] the hawk's eye."[citation needed] He never photographed with flash, a practice he saw as "[i]mpolite...like coming to a concert with a pistol in your hand."[11]
He believed in composing his photographs in the viewfinder, not in the darkroom. He showcased this belief by having nearly all his photographs printed only at full-frame and completely free of any cropping or other darkroom manipulation.[1] Indeed, he emphasized that his prints were not cropped by insisting they include the first millimetre or so of the unexposed clear negative around the image area resulting, after printing, in a black border around the positive image.
Cartier-Bresson worked exclusively in black and white, other than a few unsuccessful attempts in color. He disliked developing or making his own prints.[1] He said: "I've never been interested in the process of photography, never, never. Right from the beginning. For me, photography with a small camera like the Leica is an instant drawing."[12]
He started the tradition of testing new camera lenses by taking photographs of ducks in urban parks. He never published the images but referred to them as 'my only superstition' as he considered it a 'baptism' of the lens.[13]
Cartier-Bresson is regarded as one of the art world's most unassuming personalities. He disliked publicity and exhibited a ferocious shyness since his days in hiding from the Nazis during World War II. Although he took many famous portraits, his own face was little known to the world at large (which presumably had the advantage of allowing him to work on the street in peace). He dismissed others' applications of the term "art" to his photographs, which he thought were merely his gut reactions to moments in time that he had happened upon.
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... . In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif.
—Henri Cartier-Bresson[14]
Works
Bibliography
1947: The Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Text by Lincoln Kirstein, Museum of Modern Art, New York.
1952: The Decisive Moment. Texts and photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cover by Henri Matisse. Simon & Schuster, New York. French edition
1954: Les Danses à Bali. Texts by Antonin Artaud on Balinese theater and commentary by Béryl de Zoete Delpire, Paris. German edition
1955: The Europeans. Text and photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cover by Joan Miró. Simon & Schuster, New York. French edition
1955: People of Moscow. Thames and Hudson, London. French, German and Italian editions
1956: China in Transition. Thames and Hudson, London. French, German and Italian editions
1958: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Fotografie. Text by Anna Farova. Statni nakladatelstvi krasné, Prague and Bratislava.
1963: Photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Grossman Publisher, New York. French, English, Japanese and Swiss editions
1964: China. Photographs and notes on fifteen months spent in China. Text by Barbara Miller. Bantam Books, New York. French edition
1966: Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art. Text by Jean-Pierre Montier. Translated from the French L'Art sans art d'Henri Cartier-Bresson by Ruth Taylor. Bulfinch Press, New York.
1968: The World of HCB. Viking Press, New York. French, German and Swiss editions
1969: Man and Machine. Commissioned by IBM. French, German, Italian and Spanish editions
1970: France. Text by François Nourissier. Thames and Hudson, London. French and German editions
1972: The Face of Asia. Introduction by Robert Shaplen. Published by John Weatherhill (New York and Tokyo) and Orientations Ltd. (Hong Kong). French edition
1973: About Russia. Thames and Hudson, London. French, German and Swiss editions
1976: Henri Cartier-Bresson. Texts by Henri Cartier-Bresson. History of Photography Series. History of Photography Series. French, German, Italian, Japanese and Italian editions
1979: Henri Cartier-Bresson Photographer. Text by Yves Bonnefoy. Bulfinch, New York. French, English, German, Japanese and Italian editions
1983: Henri Cartier-Bresson. Ritratti. Texts by André Pieyre de Mandiargues and Ferdinando Scianna. Coll. " I Grandi Fotografi ". Gruppo Editoriale Fabbri, Milan. English and Spanish editions
1985:
Henri Cartier-Bresson en Inde. Introduction de Satyajit Ray, photographies et notes d'Henri Cartier-Bresson. Texte d'Yves Véquaud. Centre National de la Photographie, Paris. Editions anglaise
Photoportraits. Texts by André Pieyre de Mandiargues. Thames and Hudson, London. French and German editions
1987:
Henri Cartier-Bresson. The Early Work. Texts by Peter Galassi. Museum of Modern Art, New York. French edition
Henri Cartier-Bresson in India. Introduction by Satyajit Ray, photographs and notes by Henri Cartier-Bresson, texts by Yves Véquaud. Thames and Hudson, London. French edition
1989:
L'Autre Chine. Introduction by Robert Guillain. Collection Photo Notes. Centre National de la Photographie, Paris
Line by Line. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s drawings. Introduction by Jean Clair and John Russell. Thames and Hudson, London. French and German editions
1991:
America in Passing. Introduction by Gilles Mora. Bulfinch, New York. French, English, German, Italian, Portuguese and Danish editions
Alberto Giacometti photographié par Henri Cartier-Bresson. Texts by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Louis Clayeux. Franco Sciardelli, Milan
1994:
A propos de Paris. Texts by Véra Feyder and André Pieyre de Mandiargues. Thames and Hudson, London. French, German and Japanese editions
Double regard. Drawings and photographs. Texts by Jean Leymarie. Amiens : Le Nyctalope. French and English editions
Mexican Notebooks 1934–1964. Text by Carlos Fuentes. Thames and Hudson, London. French, Italian, and German editions
L'Art sans art. Texte de Jean-Pierre Montier. Editions Flammarion, Paris. Editions allemande, anglaise et italienne
1996: L'Imaginaire d'après nature. Textes de Henri Cartier-Bresson. Fata Morgana, Paris. Editions allemande et américaine
1997: Europeans. Texts by Jean Clair. Thames and Hudson, London. French, German, Italian and Portuguese editions
1998: Tête à tête. Texts by Ernst H. Gombrich. Thames & Hudson, London. French, German, Italian and Portuguese editions
1999: The Mind's Eye. Texts by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Aperture, New York. French and German editions
2001: Landscape Townscape. Texts by Erik Orsenna and Gérard Macé. Thames and Hudson, London. French, German and Italian editions
2003: The Man, the Image and the World. Texts by Philippe Arbaizar, Jean Clair, Claude Cookman, Robert Delpire, Jean Leymarie, Jean-Noel Jeanneney, Serge Toubiana. Thames and Hudson, London 2003. German, French, Korean, Italian and Spanish editions.
2006: An Inner SIlence: The portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Texts by Agnès Sire and Jean-Luc Nancy. Thames and Hudson, New York.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Alberto Giacometti
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Filmography
Films directed by Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was second assistant director to Jean Renoir in 1936 for La vie est à nous and Une partie de campagne, and in 1939 for La Règle du Jeu.
1937: Victoire de la vie. Documentary on the hospitals of Republican Spain: Running time: 49 minutes. Black and white.
1938: L’Espagne Vivra. Documentary on the Spanish Civil War and the post-war period. Running time: 43 minutes and 32 seconds. Black and white.
1944–45: Le Retour. Documentary on prisoners of war and detainees. Running time: 32 minutes and 37 seconds. Black and white.
1969–70: Impressions of California. Running time: 23 minutes and 20 seconds. Color.
1969–70: Southern Exposures. Running time: 22 minutes and 25 seconds. Color.
Films compiled from photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson
1956: A Travers le Monde avec Henri Cartier-Bresson. Directed by Jean-Marie Drot and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Running time: 21 minutes. Black and white.
1963: Midlands at Play and at Work. Produced by ABC Television, London. Running time : 19 minutes. Black and white.
1963–65: Five fifteen-minute films on Germany for the Süddeutscher Rundfunk, Munich.
1967: Flagrants délits. Directed by Robert Delpire. Original music score by Diego Masson. Delpire production, Paris. Running time: 22 minutes. Black and white.
1969: Québec vu par Cartier-Bresson / Le Québec as seen by Cartier-Bresson. Directed by Wolff Kœnig. Produced by the Canadian Film Board. Running time: 10 minutes. Black and white.
1970: Images de France.
1991: Contre l'oubli : Lettre à Mamadou Bâ, Mauritanie. Short film directed by Martine Franck for Amnesty International. Editing : Roger Ikhlef. Running time: 3 minutes. Black and white.
1992: Henri Cartier-Bresson dessins et photos. Director: Annick Alexandre. Short film produced by FR3 Dijon, commentary by the artist. Running time: 2 minutes and 33 seconds. Color.
1997: Série "100 photos du siècle": L'Araignée d'amour: broadcast by Arte. Produced by Capa Télévision. Running time: 6 minutes and 15 seconds. Color.
Films about Cartier-Bresson
"Henri Cartier-Bresson, point d'interrogation" by Sarah Moon, screened at Rencontres d'Arles festival in 1994
Henri Cartier-Bresson: L'amour Tout Court (70 mins, 2001. Interviews with Cartier-Bresson.)
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye (72 mins, 2006. Late interviews with Cartier-Bresson.)
Exhibitions
Public collections of Henri Cartier-Bresson's works
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, France
De Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, US
University of Fine Arts, Osaka, Japan
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom
Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France
Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France
Museum of Modern Art, New York, US
The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, US
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California, US
Institute for Contemporary Photography, New York, US
The Philadelphia Art Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, US
Kahitsukan Kyoto Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyoto, Japan
Museum of Modern Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
Films directed by Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was second assistant director to Jean Renoir in 1936 for La vie est à nous and Une partie de campagne, and in 1939 for La Règle du Jeu.
1937: Victoire de la vie. Documentary on the hospitals of Republican Spain: Running time: 49 minutes. Black and white.
1938: L’Espagne Vivra. Documentary on the Spanish Civil War and the post-war period. Running time: 43 minutes and 32 seconds. Black and white.
1944–45: Le Retour. Documentary on prisoners of war and detainees. Running time: 32 minutes and 37 seconds. Black and white.
1969–70: Impressions of California. Running time: 23 minutes and 20 seconds. Color.
1969–70: Southern Exposures. Running time: 22 minutes and 25 seconds. Color.
Films compiled from photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson
1956: A Travers le Monde avec Henri Cartier-Bresson. Directed by Jean-Marie Drot and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Running time: 21 minutes. Black and white.
1963: Midlands at Play and at Work. Produced by ABC Television, London. Running time : 19 minutes. Black and white.
1963–65: Five fifteen-minute films on Germany for the Süddeutscher Rundfunk, Munich.
1967: Flagrants délits. Directed by Robert Delpire. Original music score by Diego Masson. Delpire production, Paris. Running time: 22 minutes. Black and white.
1969: Québec vu par Cartier-Bresson / Le Québec as seen by Cartier-Bresson. Directed by Wolff Kœnig. Produced by the Canadian Film Board. Running time: 10 minutes. Black and white.
1970: Images de France.
1991: Contre l'oubli : Lettre à Mamadou Bâ, Mauritanie. Short film directed by Martine Franck for Amnesty International. Editing : Roger Ikhlef. Running time: 3 minutes. Black and white.
1992: Henri Cartier-Bresson dessins et photos. Director: Annick Alexandre. Short film produced by FR3 Dijon, commentary by the artist. Running time: 2 minutes and 33 seconds. Color.
1997: Série "100 photos du siècle": L'Araignée d'amour: broadcast by Arte. Produced by Capa Télévision. Running time: 6 minutes and 15 seconds. Color.
Films about Cartier-Bresson
"Henri Cartier-Bresson, point d'interrogation" by Sarah Moon, screened at Rencontres d'Arles festival in 1994
Henri Cartier-Bresson: L'amour Tout Court (70 mins, 2001. Interviews with Cartier-Bresson.)
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Impassioned Eye (72 mins, 2006. Late interviews with Cartier-Bresson.)
Exhibitions
Public collections of Henri Cartier-Bresson's works
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, France
De Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, US
University of Fine Arts, Osaka, Japan
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom
Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France
Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France
Museum of Modern Art, New York, US
The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, US
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California, US
Institute for Contemporary Photography, New York, US
The Philadelphia Art Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, US
Kahitsukan Kyoto Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyoto, Japan
Museum of Modern Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
Henri Cartier-Bresson's first Leica model Leica I
Exhibitions of Henri Cartier-Bresson's works
1933 Cercle Atheneo, Madrid, Spain
1933 Julien Levy Gallery, New York, US
1934 Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico (with Manuel Alvarez Bravo)
1947 Museum of Modern Art, New York, US Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany; Museum of Modern Art, Rome, Italy; Dean Gallery, Edinburgh, UK; Museum of Modern Art, New York, U.S.A.; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile
1952 Institute of Contemporary Art, London, UK
1955 Retrospektive – Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, France
1956 Photokina, Cologne, Germany
1963 Photokina, Cologne, Germany
1964 The Phillips Collection, Washington
1965–1967 2nd retrospective, Tokyo, Japan, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France, New York, US, London, UK, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Rome, Italy, Zurich, Switzerland, Cologne, Germany and other cities.
1970 En France – Grand Palais, Paris. Later in the US, USSR, Australia and Japan
1971 Les Rencontres d'Arles festival. Movies screened at Théatre Antique.
1972 Les Rencontres d'Arles festival. "Flagrant Délit " (Production Delpire) screened at Théatre Antique.
1974 Exhibition about the USSR, International Center of Photography, New York, US
1974–1997 Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris, France
1975 Carlton Gallery, New York, US
1975 Galerie Bischofberger, Zurich, Switzerland
1980 Portraits – Galerie Eric Franck, Geneve, Switzerland
1981 Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, France
1982 Hommage à Henri Cartier-Bresson – Centre National de la Photographie, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
1983 Printemps Ginza – Tokyo, Japan
1984 Osaka University of Arts, Japan
1984–1985 Paris à vue d’œil – Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France
1985 Henri Cartier-Bresson en Inde – Centre National de la Photographie, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
1985 Museo de Arte Moderno de México, Mexico
1986 L'Institut Français de Stockholm
1986 Pavillon d'Arte contemporanea, Milan, Italy
1986 Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy
1987 Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, UK (drawings and photography)
1987 Early Photographs – Museum of Modern Art, New York, U.S.A.
1988 Institut Français, Athen, Greece
1988 Palais Lichtenstein, Vienna, Austria
1988 Salzburger Landessammlung, Austria
1988 Group exhibition: "Magnum en Chine" at Rencontres d'Arles festival, France.
1989 Chapelle de l'École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France
1989 Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, Switzerland (drawings and photographs)
1989 Mannheimer Kunstverein, Mannheim, Germany (drawings and photography)
1989 Printemps Ginza, Tokyo, Japan
1990 Galerie Arnold Herstand, New York, US
1991 Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan (drawings and photographs)
1992 Centro de Exposiciones, Saragossa and Logrono, Spain
1992 Hommage à Henri Cartier-Bresson – International Center of Photography, New York, US
1992 L'Amérique – FNAC, Paris, France
1992 Musée de Noyers-sur-Serein, France
1992 Palazzo San Vitale, Parma, Italy
1993 Photo Dessin – Dessin Photo, Arles, France
1994 "Henri Cartier-Bresson, point d'interrogation" by Sarah Moon screened at Rencontres d'Arles festival, France.
1994 Dessins et premières photos – La Caridad, Barcelona, Spain
1995 Dessins et Hommage à Henri Cartier-Bresson – CRAC (Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain) Valence, Drome, France
1996 Henri Cartier-Bresson: Pen, Brush and Cameras – The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, US
1997 Les Européens – Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France
1997 Henri Cartier-Bresson, dessins – Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montreal, Canada
1998 Galerie Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland
1998 Galerie Löhrl, Mönchengladbach, Germany
1998 Howard Greenberggh Gallery, New York, US
1998 Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
1998 Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany
1998 Line by Line – Royal College of Art, London, UK
1998 Tête à Tête – National Portrait Gallery, London, UK
1998–1999 Photographien und Zeichnungen – Baukunst Galerie, Cologne, Germany
2003–2005 Rétrospective, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France; La Caixa, Barcelona, Spain; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany; Museum of Modern Art, Rome, Italy; Dean Gallery, Edinburgh, UK; Museum of Modern Art, New York, US; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile
2004 Baukunst Galerie, Cologne
2004 Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
2004 Museum Ludwig, Cologne
2008 Henri Cartier-Bresson's Scrapbook Photographs 1932-46, National Media Museum, Bradford, UK
2008 National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, India
2008 Santa Catalina Castle, Cadiz, Spain
2009 Musée de l'Art Moderne, Paris
2010 Museum of Modern Art, New York, US
2010 The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, US
2011 Museum of Design Zürich[15]
2011 High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, US
2011 Maison de la Photo, Toulon, France
2011 Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany
2011 Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia
2011-2012 Kunsthaus, Vienna, Austria
Notable portrait subjects
Avigdor Arikha
Balthus
Simone de Beauvoir
Samuel Beckett
Leonard Bernstein
Alexander Calder
Albert Camus
Truman Capote
Coco Chanel
Colette
Marcel Duchamp
William Faulkner
Martine Franck
Mahatma Gandhi
Jean Genet
Alberto Giacometti
Julie Harris
Langston Hughes
Isabelle Huppert
John Huston
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
Martin Luther King, Jr
Henri Matisse
Carson McCullers
Arthur Miller
Marilyn Monroe
Pablo Neruda
Richard Nixon
Robert Oppenheimer
Pablo Picasso
Katherine Anne Porter
Ezra Pound
Jean Renoir
Jean-Paul Sartre
Alfred Stieglitz
Igor Stravinsky
Kenzo Tange
Elsa Triolet
Harry S. Truman
Malcolm X
Awards
Cartier-Bresson is the recipient of many of prizes, awards and honorary doctorates. A partial listing of his awards:
1948: Overseas Press Club of America Award
1953: The A.S.M.P. Award
1954: Overseas Press Club of America Award
1959: The Prix de la Société française de photographie
1960: Overseas Press Club of America Award
1964: Overseas Press Club of America Award
1974: The Culture Prize, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie
1981: Grand Prix National de la Photographie
1982 Hasselblad Award
2006: Prix Nadar for the photobook Henri Cartier-Bresson: Scrapbook
References
Assouline, P. (2005). Henri Cartier-Bresson: A Biography. London: Thames & Hudson.
Galassi, Peter (2010). Henri Cartier-Bresson: the Modern Century. London: Thames & Hudson.
Montier, J. (1996). Portrait: First Sketch. Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art (p. 12). New York: Bulfinch Press.
Warren, J (2005), Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography. Routledge
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