Henri Cartier-Bresson
Created | Updated Jun 28, 2002
Henri Cartier-Bresson
French photographer, painter and draughtsman. He stands as possibly the most famous and influential photographer of the 20th Century. He not only shaped and extended the concept of photography but through it achieved a psychological penetration and formal perfection equal to other kinds of serious image-making. Cartier-Bresson did not consider his work to be "fine art," but rather documentary and journalistic in nature. Henri Cartier-Bresson is 92 years old and lives and works in France.
1908. Born on the 22nd August 1908, the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer, in Chanteloup, Seine-et-Marne Normandy. He studied at the Condorcet college.
1923. Becomes fascinated by the painting and attitude of the surrealists, instilling in him a love of painting and the surrealist eye for pattern and juxtaposition, both of which influenced his later work.
1927-28. He studies painting in Paris with the Cubist painter and critic Andre Lhote. a painter whom he remembered with affection and respect. Lhote’s Synthetic Cubist methods and high valuation of the ‘lightning sketch’ as a source of ideas seem to have proved fruitful for him.
Studies literature at Cambridge and to complete his military service. He then travelled to the USA but contracted Blackwater fever and had to return to Marseilles to convalesce.
1931. Expedition to Cote d’Ivoire, he remains there for a year. On returning to Europe he takes his first photographs.
1932 discovered the new Leica camera. The camera was small enough to be hidden, which meant that he could be an unobtrusive observer. In fact, he thought of it as an extension of his eye. Cartier-Bresson was one of the first photographers to use the 35 mm format and helped to develop the style of the "street photographer." Cartier-Bresson covered the shiny silver of his camera with black tape which allowed him to blend in with the crowd and take photographs unnoticed, his style became the standard by which many social documentary photographers pay homage. Exhibits at the gallery Julien Levy of New York. His photographs are shown alongside Ignacio Sanchez Mejias and Guillermo de Torre at the Atheneo Club in Madrid. Charles Peignot features him in the magazine Arts et Metiers graphiques.
Cartier-Bresson travelled widely, recording photographically the lives of ordinary people
1934. He embarks on a one year ethnographic expedition to Mexico. He exhibits these photographs at Palacio de Bellas Artes in 1935.
1935. He lives in the United States, leaving still photography and is initiated into cinematography by Paul Strand.
1936-39. He is second assistant to Jean Renoir making Une partie de campagne, as metier-en-scene with Jacques Becker and Andre Zvoboda on The Rules of the Game .
1936 Made La Vie est à nous. Directected as part of a collective alongside Jacques Becker Jean Renoir A propaganda film of the communist party of France, showing who the comrades help the proletarian people against the capitalists. It also features propagandistic speeches of leading members of the party
1937. volunteered in the Spanish Civil War He directs a documentary on the hospitals of Republican Spain: "Victoire de la vie" - Return to Life.
1938. At the Coronation of George VI, he chose to record the spectators rather than the grand participants, thus giving a fresh perspective to the event.
1939 La Règle du jeu,
1940. During World War Two, he served as a captain in the French army, captured by the Nazi’s, spent three years in Germany as a prisoner of war before managing to escape after two unsuccessful attempts in February 1943.
1943. He joins the MNPGD, a clandestine resistance movement helping prisoners to escape and helps the underground to document the German occupation. For Braun editions he produces portraits of artists and writers (Matisse, Bonnard, Direct, Rouault, Claudel...).
1944-45. He joins a group of professionals who photograph the liberation of Paris. He films "the Return", a documentary on the repatriation of prisoners of war and deportees for the U.S. Office of War Information..
1946. He spends more than one year in the United States following a "posthumous" exhibition which Museum of Modern Art of New York had organised believing he had disappeared during the war.
1947. He forms the cooperative photo agency Magnum with Robert Capa, David Seymour and George Rodger, which allows them more freedom in their photographic projects.
1948-49-50. He spends three years in the East, in India for the death of Ghandi, in China (during the last six months of Kuomintang and the six first of the People's Republic of China) and in Indonesia at independence.
1952-53. He lives in Europe.
1952 The Decisive Moment, a book of his work, was published. The technique known as 'The Decisive Moment', developed by photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, enabled him to capture his subjects, unposed and natural. The idea behind the technique is that each particular subject has its own moment in the context of history, an instant in time which is their particular 'decisive moment', and which completely captures the essence of that fraction of a second.
>>"Manufactured" or staged photography does not concern me. And if I make a judgement, it can only be on a psychological or sociological level. For me, the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity and the master of the instant, which questions and decides simultaneously. In order to "give a meaning" to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry.
>>To take photographs means to recognize both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye and one's hearth on the same axis.
>>As far as I am concerned, taking photographs is means of understanding, which can not be separated from other means of visual expression. It is a way of shooting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It is a way of life.<<Henri Cartier-Bresson
1954. He is the first photographer admitted in the U.S.S.R. after the relaxation of travel restriction.
1958-59. He returns to China for three months has the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the People’s Republic.
1960. After reporting from Cuba he returns after thirty years to Mexico, and remains there for four months. He travels through Canada.
1965. He spends six months in India and three in Japan.
1966. He leaves Magnum who retain the rights to his files. As before, his photograph archives are held at Pictorial Service in Paris.
1967. Commissioned by IBM for a study on "the Man and the Machine".
1969. He prepares an exhibition "In France" for a year held at the Grand Palais in 1970:; He makes two documentaries for CBS News in the USA.
1973-gave up photography to concentrate on drawing and painting
1981. Wins the Grand Prix Nationale la Photographie, awarded by the Ministry of Culture.
1982 Hasselblad Award
1986. He receives the Novecento prize from Jorge Luis Borges in Palermo.
1991 Contre l'oubli (Against Oblivion) is a compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.
French photographer, painter and draughtsman. He stands as possibly the most famous and influential photographer of the 20th Century. He not only shaped and extended the concept of photography but through it achieved a psychological penetration and formal perfection equal to other kinds of serious image-making. Cartier-Bresson did not consider his work to be "fine art," but rather documentary and journalistic in nature. Henri Cartier-Bresson is 92 years old and lives and works in France.
1908. Born on the 22nd August 1908, the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer, in Chanteloup, Seine-et-Marne Normandy. He studied at the Condorcet college.
1923. Becomes fascinated by the painting and attitude of the surrealists, instilling in him a love of painting and the surrealist eye for pattern and juxtaposition, both of which influenced his later work.
1927-28. He studies painting in Paris with the Cubist painter and critic Andre Lhote. a painter whom he remembered with affection and respect. Lhote’s Synthetic Cubist methods and high valuation of the ‘lightning sketch’ as a source of ideas seem to have proved fruitful for him.
Studies literature at Cambridge and to complete his military service. He then travelled to the USA but contracted Blackwater fever and had to return to Marseilles to convalesce.
1931. Expedition to Cote d’Ivoire, he remains there for a year. On returning to Europe he takes his first photographs.
1932 discovered the new Leica camera. The camera was small enough to be hidden, which meant that he could be an unobtrusive observer. In fact, he thought of it as an extension of his eye. Cartier-Bresson was one of the first photographers to use the 35 mm format and helped to develop the style of the "street photographer." Cartier-Bresson covered the shiny silver of his camera with black tape which allowed him to blend in with the crowd and take photographs unnoticed, his style became the standard by which many social documentary photographers pay homage. Exhibits at the gallery Julien Levy of New York. His photographs are shown alongside Ignacio Sanchez Mejias and Guillermo de Torre at the Atheneo Club in Madrid. Charles Peignot features him in the magazine Arts et Metiers graphiques.
Cartier-Bresson travelled widely, recording photographically the lives of ordinary people
1934. He embarks on a one year ethnographic expedition to Mexico. He exhibits these photographs at Palacio de Bellas Artes in 1935.
1935. He lives in the United States, leaving still photography and is initiated into cinematography by Paul Strand.
1936-39. He is second assistant to Jean Renoir making Une partie de campagne, as metier-en-scene with Jacques Becker and Andre Zvoboda on The Rules of the Game .
1936 Made La Vie est à nous. Directected as part of a collective alongside Jacques Becker Jean Renoir A propaganda film of the communist party of France, showing who the comrades help the proletarian people against the capitalists. It also features propagandistic speeches of leading members of the party
1937. volunteered in the Spanish Civil War He directs a documentary on the hospitals of Republican Spain: "Victoire de la vie" - Return to Life.
1938. At the Coronation of George VI, he chose to record the spectators rather than the grand participants, thus giving a fresh perspective to the event.
1939 La Règle du jeu,
1940. During World War Two, he served as a captain in the French army, captured by the Nazi’s, spent three years in Germany as a prisoner of war before managing to escape after two unsuccessful attempts in February 1943.
1943. He joins the MNPGD, a clandestine resistance movement helping prisoners to escape and helps the underground to document the German occupation. For Braun editions he produces portraits of artists and writers (Matisse, Bonnard, Direct, Rouault, Claudel...).
1944-45. He joins a group of professionals who photograph the liberation of Paris. He films "the Return", a documentary on the repatriation of prisoners of war and deportees for the U.S. Office of War Information..
1946. He spends more than one year in the United States following a "posthumous" exhibition which Museum of Modern Art of New York had organised believing he had disappeared during the war.
1947. He forms the cooperative photo agency Magnum with Robert Capa, David Seymour and George Rodger, which allows them more freedom in their photographic projects.
1948-49-50. He spends three years in the East, in India for the death of Ghandi, in China (during the last six months of Kuomintang and the six first of the People's Republic of China) and in Indonesia at independence.
1952-53. He lives in Europe.
1952 The Decisive Moment, a book of his work, was published. The technique known as 'The Decisive Moment', developed by photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, enabled him to capture his subjects, unposed and natural. The idea behind the technique is that each particular subject has its own moment in the context of history, an instant in time which is their particular 'decisive moment', and which completely captures the essence of that fraction of a second.
>>"Manufactured" or staged photography does not concern me. And if I make a judgement, it can only be on a psychological or sociological level. For me, the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity and the master of the instant, which questions and decides simultaneously. In order to "give a meaning" to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry.
>>To take photographs means to recognize both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye and one's hearth on the same axis.
>>As far as I am concerned, taking photographs is means of understanding, which can not be separated from other means of visual expression. It is a way of shooting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It is a way of life.<<Henri Cartier-Bresson
1954. He is the first photographer admitted in the U.S.S.R. after the relaxation of travel restriction.
1958-59. He returns to China for three months has the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the People’s Republic.
1960. After reporting from Cuba he returns after thirty years to Mexico, and remains there for four months. He travels through Canada.
1965. He spends six months in India and three in Japan.
1966. He leaves Magnum who retain the rights to his files. As before, his photograph archives are held at Pictorial Service in Paris.
1967. Commissioned by IBM for a study on "the Man and the Machine".
1969. He prepares an exhibition "In France" for a year held at the Grand Palais in 1970:; He makes two documentaries for CBS News in the USA.
1973-gave up photography to concentrate on drawing and painting
1981. Wins the Grand Prix Nationale la Photographie, awarded by the Ministry of Culture.
1982 Hasselblad Award
1986. He receives the Novecento prize from Jorge Luis Borges in Palermo.
1991 Contre l'oubli (Against Oblivion) is a compilation of 30 French filmmakers, Alain Resnais and Jean Luc Godard among them, who use film to make a plea on behalf of a political prisoner. Jean Luc Godard and Anne Marie Mieville's film concerns the plight of Thomas Wanggai, West Papuan activist who has since died in prison. The short films were commissioned by Amnesty International.
