Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson |
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Henri Cartier-Bresson (August 22, 1908 – August 3 2004) was a French photographer. He was commonly considered the undisputed master of candid photography using the small-format 35mm rangefinder camera.
Cartier-Bresson was considered by most to be the father of photojournalism. He exclusively used the Leica 35 mm rangefinder cameras equipped with normal 50mm lenses or occasionally a telephoto for landscapes. He would have the camera's chrome body taped black to make it less conspicuous. He was one of the first photographers to shoot in the 35mm format and helped to develop the photojournalistic "street photography" style that influenced generations of photographers to come. Kodak's Plus-X and Tri-X films and the sharpness of Leica lenses allowed documentary photographers to work almost by stealth, to capture the events that surrounded them. Photographers were no longer bound by a huge press camera, or an intrusive flash gun and bulbs. These photographers operated with what Henri called "the velvet hand...the hawk's eye." Henri never photographed with a flash bulb. He said: "Impolite...like coming to a concert with a pistol in your hand." He believed in composing his photographs in his camera and not in the darkroom. He showcased this belief by having his photographs be printed at full-frame and completely free of any manipulation.
Recently there has been a resurgence in speculation that many of HCB's candid photos were actually posed.
Henri is long 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. He dismissed those applying the term "art" to his pictures. He felt that they were just gut reactions to moments he happened on.
"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
Childhood
Henri Cartier-Bresson was born in 1908 in Chanteloup-en-Brie, near Paris, France and was the oldest of five children. His family was wealthy. His father was a textile manufacturer, who liked to sketch in his spare time; at one time almost every French sewing kit was stocked with Cartier-Bresson thread. On his mother's side were cotton merchants and landowners in Normandy, where he spent part of his childhood. The Cartier-Bresson family lived in a grand bourgeois neighborhood near the Europe Bridge. They provided him with the financial support to develop his interests in photography in a more independent manner than many of his contemporaries. He owned a Box Brownie as a boy, using it for taking holiday snapshots, and later experimented with a 3 x 4 view camera. He was raised in traditional French bourgeois fashion. He was required to address his parents as "vous", rather than the familiar "tu". His father assumed that Henri would take up the family business, but Henri was headstrong and was "strongly appalled" by working for the family business.
The early years
Henri was educated in Paris. He attended the École Fénelon, a Catholic school. Henri was introduced to the feel of oil painting by his Uncle Louis, a gifted painter. "Painting has been my obsession from the time that my 'mythical father', my father's brother, led me into his studio during the Christmas holidays in 1913, when I was five years old. There I lived in the atmosphere of painting; I inhaled the canvases." Uncle Louis taught him painting for a short while. However, Uncle Louis was killed during World War I.
In 1927, at the age of 19, he entered a private art school and the Paris studio of the Cubist and sculptor André Lhote, the Lhote Academy (in the Rue d'Odessa in the Montparnasse district). Lhote's ambition was to unify the Cubist's approach to reality with classical artistic forms. Lhote tried to link the French classical tradition of Poussin and David to Modernism. Henri also studied painting with society portraitist Jacques Emile Blanche. While painting, Cartier-Bresson read Fyodor Dostoevsky, Arthur Schopenhauer, Arthur Rimbaud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stéphane Mallarmé, Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. Lhote took his pupils to the Louvre Museum to study classical artists and to Parisian galleries to study contemporary art. Henri's interest in modern art was combined with an admiration for the works of the Renaissance—of masterpieces from Jan van Eyck, Paolo Uccello, Masaccio and Piero della Francesca. Henri often regarded Lhote as his teacher of photography without a camera.
Gradually, Henri began to feel uncomfortable with Lhote's "rule-laden" approach to art. Henri's rigorous theoretical training would later help him to confront and resolve problems of artistic form and composition in photography. At the time, schools of photographic realism were founded throughout Europe. Each school had a differing concept on how photography should develop. The photography revolution had begun, "Crush tradition! Photograph things as they are!" The Surrealist movement founded in 1924 was a big driver of this change in approach. While still studying at Lhote's studio, Henri began socializing with the Surrealists at the Café Cyrano, in the Place Blanche. He met a number of the movement's leading protagonists. Henri was particularly drawn to the Surrealist movement of linking the subconscious and the immediate to their work. Peter Galassi, in his book, Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Early Work, 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." Henri matured artistically in this stormy cultural and political environment. He was aware of the concepts and theories mentioned but could not find an outlet 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 Cambridge University studying English art and literature and became bilingual. In 1930, he was served his mandatory service in the French Army. He was stationed at Le Bourget, near Paris. 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."
In 1931, once out of the Army and after having reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, he sought adventure on the Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire), which was French colonial Africa. Henri 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." He survived on the Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) by shooting game and selling it to local villagers. From hunting, he learned methods that he would later use in his photography techniques. It was there on the Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) that he contracted blackwater fever and almost died. He was so ill that he sent instructions for his own funeral. While still feverish, he wrote a postcard to his grandfather, asking that he be buried in Normandy, at the edge of the Eawy forest, with Debussy's String Quartet to be played at the funeral. An uncle wrote back, "Your grandfather finds all that too expensive. It would be preferable that you return first."
Henri brought along a portable camera (smaller than a Brownie Box) to the Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire), but most of his film did not survive the tropics (Montier, 1996, p. 12). Only seven photographs survived. When Henri returned to France, he deepened his relationship with the Surrealists.
Henri was recuperating in Marseilles in 1931. He became inspired by a photograph shot in 1931 by Hungarian photojournalist Martin Munkacsi showing three naked young African boys running into the surf of Lake Tanganyika and was caught in near-silhouette. Munkacsi's photograph, titled, Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika, captured the freedom, grace and spontaneity of their movement and their joy at being alive. Henri 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." The photograph inspired him to put down his paint-brush and to take up photography seriously. He explained, "I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant." Henri acquired a Leica camera with a 50mm lens in Marseilles. This camera would accompany him for many years. He described the Leica as an extension of his eye. The anonymity it 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. 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." Restless, he photographed in Berlin, 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. He spent 1934 in Mexico, where he shared an exhibition with Manuel Alvarez Bravo. At the beginning, he did not photograph much in his native France. It would be years before he photographed there extensively.
In 1934 Henri met a young Polish intellectual, photographer named David Szymin. Szymin was called "Chim" because his name was difficult to pronounce. Later Szymin changed his name to David Seymour (1911–1956). Henri and Chim had much in common culturally. Before long, Chim introduced Henri to a Hungarian photographer named André Friedmann, who later changed his name to Robert Capa (1913–1954). Henri shared a studio in the early 1930s with Chim and Capa. Capa mentored and advised Henri, "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!"
The middle years
Henri came to America for the first time in 1935. He was again invited to exhibit his work at New York's Julien Levy Gallery (where he shared display space with fellow photographers Walker Evans and Alvarez Bravo). He was approached by Carmel Snow of Harper's Bazaar, who gave him an assignment to do fashion photography. He fared poorly at this assignment for he had no idea how to interact and direct the models. Nevertheless, Snow was the first American editor to publish his photographs in a magazine. While in New York, he met photographer Paul Strand, who did cinematographic work on the Depression-era documentary, The Plow That Broke the Plains. When he returned to France, Henri applied for a job with renowned French film director Jean Renoir. He worked as an actor in Renoir's 1936 film Un Parti de Campagne (A Day in the Country), also in the 1939 La Règle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game, Henri plays a butler.). He was second assistant in La Règle du Jeu. Renoir made him act, so he could understand what it felt like on the other side of the camera. Henri also helped Renoir do a film for the Communist party on the 200 families who ran France including his own! During the Spanish civil war, he co-directed an anti-fascist film with Herbert Kline. This film promoted the Republican medical services.
Henri was first published as a photojournalist in 1937 when he was assigned to cover 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. The accompanying credit for his photographs published in Regards, read "Cartier". He was hesitant about using his full family name.
In 1937, Henri married Javanese dancer, Ratna Mohini. They had set up their home in a fourth-floor servants' flat at 19, Rue Danielle Casanova. It was a large studio with a small bedroom and kitchen and a bathroom where Henri once developed his films. Between 1937 and 1939 Henri was the photographer for the French Communist's evening paper, Ce Soir. Henri (along with Chim and Capa) was a leftist, but he did not join the French Communist party. Henri joined the French Army as a Corporal in the Film and Photo unit when World War II broke out in September 1939. During the Battle of France, in June 1940 at St. Dié in the Vosges Mountains and spent 35 months in prisoner-of-war camps and worked as a forced laborer under the Nazis. According to Henri, he was forced to perform "thirty-two different kinds of hard manual labor." He worked "as slowly and as poorly as possible." He tried to escape twice from the prison camp and failed both times. He was punished by solitary confinement. His third escape was successful. He hid on a farm in Touraine before getting false papers that allowed him to travel 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 in 1940. He continued photographing throughout World War II, working with the underground photographic unit recording the Nazi occupation and the liberation. In 1944-45 (by the time of the armistice), 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.
Towards the end of the War, rumors had reached America that Henri had been killed. Henri's 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). The MoMA had begun to prepare a "posthumous" show for him. In 1946 when they learned that Henri was still alive, he volunteered to go to New York to help with the preparation of this exhibition. The show made its debut in 1947. Together with this show, the MoMA also published the first book of his work, The Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, with texts by Lincoln Kirstein and Beaumont Newhall.
The formation of Magnum
In the spring of 1947, Henri, along with Robert Capa, David "Chim" Seymour, Bill Vandivert, George Rodger became founders of Magnum Photos. Magnum was the brainchild of Robert Capa. Magnum Photo was to be a cooperative picture agency. The team had decided to split up photo assignments among the members. Rodger, who had quit Life Magazine in London after covering the World War II, would cover Africa and the Middle East. Chim, who spoke most European languages, would work in Europe. Henri would be assigned to India and China. Vandivert, who had also left Life Magazine, would work in America, and Capa would work anywhere that had an assignment. The Paris office was managed by Maria Eisner, formally of Alliance Photo. The New York office was managed by Vandervert's wife, Rita Vandivert. Rita became Magnum's first president. Magnum's purpose was to "feel the pulse" of the times.
Some of Magnum's 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, giving birth to the conception. Magnum provided some of the most arresting and popular images of this period.
The Decisive Moment
Henri achieved journalistic recognition for his coverage of Gandhi's death in India in 1948 and the Maoist revolution in China in 1949. He covered the last six months of the Kuomintang administration and the first six months of the incoming Maoist government (the People's Republic). He also photographed the last surviving Imperial eunuchs in Beijing as the city was falling to the communists. From China, he continued on to Indonesia where he documented the independency of the country from the Dutch.
In 1952 he published his book, The Decisive Moment. The book featured a portfolio of 126 photos from the East and the West. It also featured a book cover drawn by Henri Matisse. Henri's 4,500-word philosophical preface was where the term Decisive Moment was born. He first wrote it in French, taking his text from the 17th-century Cardinal de Retz: "Il n'y a rien dans ce monde qui n'ait un moment decisif." This translates to "There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment." Henri applied this to his photography style. Henri said: "To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression." Tériade, the Greek-born French publisher whom Henri idolized, gave the book its French title, Images à la sauvette, which could be loosely translated as "Shooting on the run." American publisher, 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 Henri's preface.
"Photography is not like painting," he 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."
Henri held his first exhibition in France at the Pavillon de Marsan in the Louvre Museum in 1955.
The later years
Henri's photography had taken him to many places on the globe – China, Mexico, Canada, the United States, India, Japan, Soviet Union, and many other countries. Cartier-Bresson became the first Western photographer to photograph 'freely' in the post-war Soviet Union. In 1968 he began to turn away from photography and followed his passion for drawing and painting. Henri left Magnum in 1966 to concentrate on portraiture and landscapes. In 1967 Henri and his first wife Ratna "Elie" were divorced. Henri married photographer Martine Franck, who is thirty years younger than him, in 1970. Martine and Henri had a little girl in May 1972 and named her Mélanie.
Henri retired from photography in the early 1970s to return 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." He held his first exhibition of drawings at the Carlton Gallery in New York in 1975.
The Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation was created by Cartier-Bresson and his wife and daughter in 2002 to preserve and share his legacy.
Death and legacy
Cartier-Bresson died in Céreste (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France) on August 3, 2004 at the age of 95. No cause of death was provided. He was buried in the Cimetière de Montjustin, Alpes de Haute Provence, France. He is survived by his wife and fellow photographer Martine Franck, and his daughter Mélanie.
Cartier-Bresson spent over three decades, on assignment for Life Magazine and many other prominent journals. He traveled without bounds, documenting some of the great upheavals of the 20th century — the Spanish civil war, the liberation of Paris in 1945, the 1968 student rebellion in Paris, the fall of the Kuomintang in China to the communists and the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the Berlin Wall, the deserts of Egypt. And along the way he paused to document portraits of Jean-Paul Sartre, Picasso, Colette, Matisse, Ezra Pound and Alberto Giacometti.
Henri was a photographer who hated to be photographed and treasured his privacy above all. He believed that what went on beneath the surface was nobody's business but his own. He recalled that he once confided his innermost secrets to a Paris taxi driver, certain that he would never meet the man again.
Notable subjects
- Albert Camus
- Truman Capote
- Coco Chanel
- Marcel Duchamp
- William Faulkner
- Mohandas Gandhi
- John Huston
- Martin Luther King, Jr
- Henri Matisse
- Marilyn Monroe
- Richard Nixon
- Robert Oppenheimer
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Igor Stravinsky
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
- 1975 The Culture Prize, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie
- 1981 Grand Prix National de la Photographie
- 1982 Hasselblad Award
Exhibitions
Public collections of Henri Cartier-Bresson's works
- Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, France
- De Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, USA
- 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, USA
- The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA
- The Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Institute for Contemporary Photography, New York, USA
- The Philadelphia Art Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvannia, USA
- The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA
- Kahitsukan Kyoto Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyoto, Japan
- Museum of Modern Art, Tel Aviv, Israel
- Stockholm Modern Museet, Sweden
Exhibitions of Henri Cartier-Bresson's works
- 2003–2005 Retrospective, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France; La Caixa, Barcelona, Spain; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany; Museum of Modern Art, Rome, Italy; Dean Gallery, Edinburgh, U.K.; Museum of Modern Art, New York, U.S.A.; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile
- 2004 Museum Ludwig, Cologne
- 2004 Baukunst Galerie, Cologne
- 2004 Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin
- 1998–1999 Photographien und Zeichnungen - Baukunst Galerie, Cologne, Germany
- 1998 Line by Line – Royal College of Art, London, U.K.
- 1998 Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland
- 1998 Galerie Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland
- 1998 Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany
- 1998 Tete à Tete – National Portrait Gallery, London, U.K.
- 1998 Galerie Löhrl, Mönchengladbach, Germany
- 1998 Howard Greenberggh Gallery, New York, U.S.A.
- 1997 De Européenne – Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France
- 1997 Henri Cartier-Bresson, dessins – Musée des Beaux-Arts, Montreal, Canada
- 1974–1997 Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris, France
- 1996 Henri Cartier-Bresson: Pen brush and Cameras – The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, U.S.A.
- 1995 Dessins e Hommage à Henri Cartier-Bresson – CRAG Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain Valence, Drome, France
- 1994 Dessins e première photos – La Caridad, Barcelona, Spain
- 1993 Photo Dessin – Dessin Photo, Arles, France
- 1992 Musée de Noyers-sur-Serein, France
- 1992 Palazzo San Vitale, Parma, Italy
- 1992 Centro de Exposiciones, Saragossa and Logrono, Spain
- 1992 L'Amérique – FNAC, Paris, France
- 1992 Hommage à Henri Cartier-Bresson – International Center of Photography, New York, U.S.A.
- 1991 Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan (drawings and photographs)
- 1990 Galerie Arnold Herstand, New York, U.S.A.
- 1989 Mannheimer Kunstverein, Mannheim, Germany (drawings and photography)
- 1989 Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, Switzerland (drawings and photographs)
- 1989 Printemps Ginza, Tokyo, Japan
- 1989 Chapelle de l'École des Beaux-Arts , Paris, France
- 1988 Palais Lichtenstein, Vienna, Austria
- 1988 Salzburger Landessammlung, Austria
- 1988 Institute français, Athen, Greece
- 1987 Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, U.K. (drawings and photography)
- 1987 Early Photographs – Museum of Modern Art, New York, U.S.A.
- 1986 L'Institute français de Stockholm
- 1986 Tor Vergata University, Rome, Italy
- 1986 Pavillon d'Arte contemporanea, Milan, Italy
- 1984–1985 Paris à vue d’oil – Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France
- 1985 Musée d'Arte moderno de Maxico, Mexico
- 1985 Henri Cartier.Bresson en Inde – Centre National de la Photographie, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
- 1984 Osaka University of Arts, Japan
- 1983 Printemps Ginza – Tokyo, Japan
- 1982 Hommage a Henri Cartier-Bresson – Centre National de la Photographie, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
- 1981 Musée d'Art moderne de la Villa de Paris, France
- 1981 Retrospective – Musée d'Art de la Ville en France
- 1980 Portraits – Galerie Eric Franck, Geneve, Switzerland
- 1975 Carlton Gallery, New York, U.S.A,
- 1975 Galerie Bischofberger, Zurich, Switzerland
- 1974 Exhibition about the USSR, International Center of Photography, New York, U.S.A.
- 1970 En France – Grande Palais, Paris. Later in the U.S.A., USSR, Australia and Japan
- 1965–1967 2nd retrospective, Tokyo, Japan, Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, France, New York, U.S.A., London, U.K., Amsterdam, Netherlands, Rome, Italy, Zurich, Switzerland, Cologne, Germany and other cities.
- 1964 Philipps Collection, Washington
- 1963 Photokina, Cologne, Germany
- 1956 Photokina, Cologne, Germany
- 1955 Retrospektive – Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, France
- 1952 Institute of Contemporary Art, London, U.K.
- 1947 Museum of Modern Art, New York, U.S.A.
- 1934 Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico (with Manuel Alvarez Bravo)
- 1933 Julien Levy Gallery, New York, U.S.A.
- 1933 Cercle Atheneo, Madrid, Spain
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.
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 Miro. 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
- 1985 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
- 1987 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
- 1989 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
- 1991 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
- 1994 Double regard. Drawings and photographs. Texts by Jean Leymarie. Amiens : Le Nyctalope. French and English editions
- 1994 Mexican Notebooks 1934–1964. Text by Carlos Fuentes. Thames and Hudson, London. French, Italian, and German editions
- 1994 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.
References
- Assouline, P. (2005). Henri Cartier-Bresson: A Biography. London, UK: Thames & Hudson.
- Montier, J. (1996). Portrait: First Sketch. Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art (p. 12). New York, NY: Bulfinch Press.
See also
External links
- Henri Cartier-Bresson's biographic sketch at Find A Grave
- Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
- Tête à Tête: Portraits by Henri Cartier-Bresson at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC
- Tête à Tête: Special Feature by Washington Post of the Exhibition by Henri Cartier-Bresson
- Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
- Magnum Photos Web Site
- Cartier-Bresson's Impact On Photojournalism
- Henri Cartier-Bresson / When Photography Becomes Art (Dutch)
- Henri Cartier-Bresson Online