HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON PHOTOGRAPHS

Exhibition Catalog for the International Center of Photography, NY,

Organized by Robert Delpire 
 
 

Is there anyone unfamiliar with the famous work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the legendary, influential photographer and filmmaker - receiver of many countries' highest awards? 

Born 100 years ago (1908-2004) near Paris, France, Henri Cartier-Bresson found fame with the invention of the tiny, lightweight 35mm Leica camera, replacing heavier bulkier cameras of the day. With the camera fitting in his hand, Cartier-Bresson could work inconspicuously - watching for “the decisive moment”– a social comment, a funny incident, a great scene. 

Before he was famous, he’d survived blackwater fever in Africa, and later during WWII, three years imprisonment by the Nazis followed by and escape to fight for a free France.  His career began after the war in 1947 with Robert Capa and others founding the Magnum Photo Agency.  His assignments led him across the world to land at historic turning points like the making on the new Republic of China, as well as the death of Ghandi in India.    

But for the youthful Cartier-Bresson, a camera was not his first choice – preferring a career in painting.  Paris in the 1920’s exploded with modern art movements – Impressionism to Cubism.  Cartier-Bresson took to Surrealism – learning the power of form and composition. But not content, he left for more studies in England. Later, while in Africa, he hunted - sighting game with a rangefinder rifle.  

Back in Paris, inspired by innovative photographers, he trained his sights through a viewfinder camera to shoot photos. Seeking a new realism in the streets, he transformed the imagination of the painter into the vision of the photographer.  Instead of a brush and paint on canvas, he clicked the shutter on film.  Not interested in darkroom technique, or the manipulations of tones, or of cropping, he composed in the camera viewfinder for the direct-end-result.  

He said, “Photography is not like painting.  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 offers you  --- and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.”   

 

Liverpool, England, 1963, shows 3 little girls wearing white socks, black dress shoes, and Sunday best coats walking soberly in front of a brick shell of a building surrounded by rubble and other gray bombed-out buildings.  The contrast of innocent life going forward amidst destruction comments on human durability.

 

La Villette, Paris, 1929 – An early photo of a woman whose demeanor implies hopeless disdain for the street sleeper.  Square lines on the street, square shapes in back of the woman and a car wheel like a bull’s eye frame the scene.

Allees du Prado, Marseilles, 1932 - Seeing V shape bare tree limbs recede to a single vanishing point as a backdrop for the triangular black s hape of a man in hat and cape, cigarette holder and cane-like umbrella in the foreground. 

 

Madrid, 1933 – Elements of design - An expanse of wall punctuated with Mondian-like square and rectangular openings creates a setting for a street full of kids with a few adult walkers.  Facing profiles of two boys on each side lead the eye to the self-aware little boy looking at us. 

 

Ascot, England, 1955 – A washout as people leave in the rain.  Rhythmic lines of benches, the spokes of the umbrella, and the lingerer with a racing sheet covering his head tell the story. 

 

Athens, 1953 – Seeing a double time warp - a separation of over 2000 years reveals two old women in black walking beneath two classically carved stone ladies standing still. 

 

 

 

Epirus, Greece, 1961 – Snapped from the back of a car - a figure doing a handstand on a vanishing roadway, backed by a bulky tree and horizontal hills. 

 

Aquila degli Abruzzi, Italy, 1952 – Like a painting by Peter Bruegel, the elder, the composition leads down a railing and steps to diagonals of people milling between architecture in deep space. 

Last Days of the Kuomintang, Peking, 1949 – The smiling crowd with factions drifting off its edges – the military leader, at ease, his back to us in the foreground and the gray buildings of ancient China in the background.  To quote Cartier-Bresson: “In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject.  The little human detail can become a leitmotif.”

Anniversary Celebration for the Maharaja of Baroda, India, 1974 - Anxious faces, open hands - young and old reach for food – handed across a diagonal rope. While Cartier-Bresson avoided being p hotographed, he took many portraits of others. 

 

Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie, Paris, 1945 – Madam M. Curie’s daughter with her husband, both renowned scientists, shown in strong side lighting with pensive faces and clenched hands.

 

 

Giacometti, 1961 – The sculptor walks like his walking man sculpture.

 

Ezra Pound, 1970 – Fierce face, intensified by light and dark. Sometimes Cartier-Bresson photographed faceless landscapes like

The Hudson and Manhattan, NY, 1946 – A study contrasts white clouds over a vertical gray skyline exposing debris filled with angular black lines in the foreground.

 

Civil Court Building, NY, 1947 – Body language tells the story on the steps of power, balanced by neo-classic columns and groups of people.  

 

Rue Mouffetard, Paris, 1954– A click on another “decisive moment”.

 

Tuileries Gardens, Paris, 1976– Nostalgic and poetic, like a farewell shot taken at the end of his photographic career – people with their reflections in a landscape with a zigzag of lighted pathways.

   

In the 1970’s, after marrying Martine Frank, a photographer, and having a daughter, Melanie, Cartier-Bresson put his professional photographic career away – literally, putting his Leica into a safe.  He returned to his first love - painting and sketching to see life again in a new burst of creativity.  But his photographic images imprint our memory.