Cartier-Bresson, Henri

Henri Cartier-Bresson (Aperture Masters of Photography)

Henri Cartier-Bresson's amazing feat as a photographer is the ability to follow his heart and the keen vision of his mind and eye in each photograph. His subjects are only part of the image in the viewfinder, whose composition he sometimes arranges with geometric precision. Many of his best photographs also have startlingly broad political and sociological connotations, which gives the ordinary subjects extraordinary dignity, even grandeur. Europeans is filled with these images, which are often visually complex as well: a 1952 picture depicts a poor immigrant tilling hard ground while in the distance the prosperity-propelled factories of industry belch smoke into already smoggy skies. This is not just a picture of a poor man, or industrial power, or the contrast between the two. It's an open question about the meaning of life, with an anonymous no one--just another human being--at its center. Another wonderful image in this collection is a 1954 shot of a handsome soldier ogling two pretty women. It shows that even at the bleakest moments in their social history, Muscovites were not immune to pheromonal persuasion.

Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer

Henri Cartier-Bresson: A Propos de Paris

"Photography is nothing, it's life that interests me." With his ever-present Leica camera, Henri Cartier-Bresson captured the raw and the sweet, the comic and the profound moments of lives that were lost in the grind or relegated to someone else's memory--the coincidental moment at which a reflection in a puddle of water mimics a poster on a nearby wall or when lovers kiss, oblivious to the not-so-pristine world around them. It is the familiar beauty and cruelty of the day-to-day that is so engaging in his photographs: two cosmopolitan woman chat nonchalantly while surrounded by empty lettuce crates; mourners at a funeral stare directly into the camera; postwar Paris awakens in the fog. Cartier-Bresson was the master of the "decisive moment," that fleeting instant for which a picture really is worth a thousand words, which is the essence of photojournalism. In no place is this more exemplified than in his images of Paris.

Cartier-Bresson personally selected the more than 130 black-and-white photographs of Paris for this publication. With photographs taken over a period of 50 years, the work is beautifully and generously printed in duotone. The accompanying essays, both short and unobtrusive, are also familiar and personal. One essayist captures the essence of Cartier-Bresson's camera work: "When life calls, he is always there, to assist, or to admire; to rebel, or to say no to exploiters and imposters, and to all those who demean its value." --Manine Golden

"Photography is nothing, it's life that interests me." With his ever-present Leica camera, Henri Cartier-Bresson captured the raw and the sweet, the comic and the profound moments of lives that were lost in the grind or relegated to someone else's memory--the coincidental moment at which a reflection in a puddle of water mimics a poster on a nearby wall or when lovers kiss, oblivious to the not-so-pristine world around them. It is the familiar beauty and cruelty of the day-to-day that is so engaging in his photographs: two cosmopolitan woman chat nonchalantly while surrounded by empty lettuce crates; mourners at a funeral stare directly into the camera; postwar Paris awakens in the fog. Cartier-Bresson was the master of the "decisive moment," that fleeting instant for which a picture really is worth a thousand words, which is the essence of photojournalism. In no place is this more exemplified than in his images of Paris.Cartier-Bresson personally selected the more than 130 black-and-white photographs of Paris for this publication. With photographs taken over a period of 50 years, the work is beautifully and generously printed in duotone. The accompanying essays, both short and unobtrusive, are also familiar and personal. One essayist captures the essence of Cartier-Bresson's camera work: "When life calls, he is always there, to assist, or to admire; to rebel, or to say no to exploiters and imposters, and to all those who demean its value." --Manine Golden

An Inner Silence: The Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson

"No one in the twentieth century created more instantly recognizable images than Cartier-Bresson."—Denver Post

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) was perhaps the finest and most influential image maker of the twentieth century, and his portraits are among his best-known work. Over a fifty year period, he photographed some of the most eminent personalities of the era, as well as ordinary people, chosen as subjects because of their striking and unusual features.

In 2003, the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, which was created to provide a permanent home for his collected works, opened in Paris. This book is published to coincide with the first exhibition at the Fondation that is drawn entirely from those archives, and it features both well-known images and previously unpublished portraits.

Each portrait has been chosen because it perfectly embodies Cartier-Bresson's description of what he was attempting to communicate in his photographs: "I'm seeking above all an inner silence. I am trying to translate the personality and not an expression." The portraits reproduced here—discreet, without artifice, their subjects frozen in time—confirm once more the singular gift of Cartier-Bresson who instinctively knew in which revealing fraction of a second to click the shutter. 100 illustrations.

Scrapbook

Henri Cartier-Bresson's famous scrapbook from the 1940s, published in its entirety for the first time.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1940. After two unsuccessful attempts, he managed to escape in 1943. During this period, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, assuming that the photographer had died in the war, started preparing what they thought would be a posthumous exhibition of his work. When he reappeared, Cartier-Bresson was delighted to learn of the exhibition and decided to review his entire oeuvre and curate it himself.

In 1946 Cartier-Bresson traveled to New York with about 300 prints in his suitcase, bought a scrapbook, glued in the photos, and brought that album to MoMA's curators. His exhibition there, a celebration of his survival, opened on February 4, 1947.

In the 1990s, Cartier-Bresson once again turned his attention to this scrapbook. Following his death in 2004, the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, the present owner of the prints, finished the job of restoring them, making it possible to bring a large body of his extraordinary work to the public, images that have now become a memorial collection after all.

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Man, The Image & The World: A Retrospective

Henri Cartier-Bresson spent four decades traveling the world as a photojournalist in search of what he called "the decisive moment"--the instant when visual harmony and human significance coalesce. Published in honor of his 95th birthday, Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Man, The Image & The World is a handsome volume that reproduces more than 600 photographs, film stills, and drawings and includes essays by art, photography, and film experts. Trained as a painter in his native France, Cartier-Bresson began his photography career during a trip to the Ivory Coast in 1931. After shooting his way through Europe, Mexico and the U.S., he became an assistant to filmmaker Jean Renoir and directed documentaries in support of the Spanish Civil War. Imprisoned by the Germans during World War II, he escaped to document the liberation of Paris. More than a quarter-century of magazine photography followed—-including vivid glimpses of modern life in India, China and the Soviet Union—-before he put aside his camera in favor of his sketchbook. Cartier-Bresson's ability to capture peak moments resulted in unforgettable single photographs, like that of a woman in a group of former concentration camp prisoners who suddenly recognizes her Gestapo informer and reaches out to hit her. His constant watchfulness led to images that capture fleeting emotion—-lust, pride, despair, expectation, glee—-on the faces of people going about their daily lives in grim cities, sleepy villages, and vast landscapes. Shaped by compassion and a self-effacing absence of personal judgment, these photographs reflect a worldview no longer fashionable but forever relevant to human understanding. —Cathy Curtis

"A definitive catalogue….Once Cartier-Bresson photographed something or someone, you might as well have retired them as subjects."—Newsweek

Henri Cartier-Bresson was one of the finest image makers of our time. His extraordinary photographs were shaped by an eye and a mind legendary for their intelligent empathy and for their unerring ability to get to the heart of the matter.

This sumptuous collection of work by Cartier-Bresson is the ultimate look at his achievements. The book brims with classic photographs that have become icons of the medium, as well as rarely seen work from all periods of Cartier-Bresson's life, including a number of previously unpublished photographs and a generous selection of drawings, paintings, and film stills. The book also features telling personal souvenirs of his youth, his family, and the founding of Magnum.

This definitive collection of a master photographer's work will be an essential book for anyone interested in photography—indeed, for anyone interested in the people, places, and events of the past century. 600+ illustrations in color and duotone.

The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers

Henri Cartier-Bresson in India

"Striking images of a land renowned for its contradictions and variety as viewed by one of the great artists of our century."—Houston Post

Henri Cartier-Bresson's record of his fascination with India over half a lifetime contains the very best of his photographs of that country. Beginning in 1947 at the time of Independence and produced during six extended visits over a twenty-year period, these beautiful, dramatic images are shaped by an eye and a mind legendary for their intelligent empathy and for going to the heart of the matter.

Cartier-Bresson's extraordinary gifts of observation and his famous "mantle of invisibility," as well as his good connections with Jawaharlal Nehru and others, allowed him to capture the quintessence of India. His pictures of Hindus in refugee camps after the Partition or beggars in Calcutta speak with the same passion and authority as those of the Maharaja of Baroda's sumptuous birthday celebrations or of the Mountbattens on the steps of Government House. Ample space is given to his famous reportages, such as the astonishing sequence on the death and cremation of Gandhi. But above all, it is the apparently ordinary faces and scenes from market, temple, or countryside that have the power to put us in direct touch with the spirit of a country and its people. 105 duotone illustrations.

Walker Evans & Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photograph America

Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson belonged to the same generation and shared an insatiable intellectual curiosity. Their photographs were exhibited together in 1935 at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, and for 18 brief months--between 1946 and 1947--they were both working in the U.S. while Cartier-Bresson was preparing his show at The Museum of Modern Art. At the time, Evans had already published Let Us Now Praise Famous Men with James Agee (1941) and was at work on Many Are Called, the first edition of which was published in 1966. Cartier-Bresson, on the other hand, was making a fresh start, leaving behind his work in film to pursue a career as a stills photographer. Although both men approached photography as a task of social criticism, their practices were always quite distinct: Evans kept a visible critical distance from his subject, while Cartier-Bresson, who was exploring a territory that was still new to him, tended to address individual dynamism. Marking the centenary of Cartier-Bresson's birth, Photograph America compares Evans and Cartier-Bresson's work on America in the period from 1930 to 1947. It presents an opportunity to confront and compare the visions of both of these seminal photographic masters at once.
Henri Cartier-Bresson's (1908-2004) first passion was painting. He began taking photographs in the late 1920s, turned to cinematography in the 1930s and moved back to still photography in the 1940s.
Walker Evans (1903-1975) is best known for his work documenting the Great Depression for the Farm Security Administration.

Henri Cartier Bresson 2009 Wall Calendar

A photographer with a remarkable instinct for both novel compositions and dramatic international events, Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) produced images that affected virtually every photojournalist in the world. The agency he cofounded, Magnum Photos, today remains a standard-bearer of commercial photography. This calendar presents twelve of Cartier-Bresson's magnificent black-and-white images.

Size: 13 x 12 in.; opens to 13 x 24 in.