Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson : China 1948-1949 I 1958

On November 25, 1948, Henri Cartier-Bresson receives an assignment from Life magazine to report on the “last days of Beijing” before the arrival of the Maoists troops. He went there for two weeks, and remained ten months, mainly around Shanghai, attending the fall of the town of Nanjing held by the Kuomintang, then forced to stay in Shanghai under communist control for 4 months, and leaving China a few days before the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China, October 1, 1949.

Italy by Magnum , from Henri Cartier-Bresson to Paolo Pellegrin – The Eye of Photography

For L’Italia di Magnum. Da Henri Cartier-Bresson a Paolo Pellegrin, an exhibition currently on view at CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia, in Torino, twenty photographers have been called upon to recount events, great and small, through Italian figures and localities from the post-war years right up to the present day, in a blend of famous and less familiar photographs, of places known throughout the world and of ordinary citizens who make up the social and visual fabric of Italia.

The ‘‘decisive moment,’’ in the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and his stylistic followers, is a mysteriously precise collaboration with the world.

Martin Munkacsi’s image, Cartier-Bresson said, inspired his own approach, showing him that ‘‘photography could reach eternity through the moment.’’

Magnum Photos Blog

This collection of work provides the ultimate retrospective look at a lifetime’s achievement. It includes the first photographs taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson, some of which have never been published, rarely seen work from all periods of his life, and a generous selection of classic photographs that have become icons of the medium.

From the D-Day landings and Tiananmen Square to Salvador Dalí’s flying-cat hijinks, contact sheets reveal the hidden secrets of unforgettable images

Henri Cartier-Bresson, co-founder of the famed Magnum agency, once likened the contact sheet to the analyst’s couch. “It’s all there: what surprises us is what we catch, what we miss, what disappears.”

A couple of months ago, we shared an interview with the photographer known as Weegee that was released in the 1958 vinyl record titled "Famous

It is the same intuition. You have to know in which framework you have to tell your story for the magazine, but you must not work for the magazine. You work for yourself, and the story.

You can watch the "Pen, Brush and Camera" full length documentary (1998) about Henri Cartier-Bresson on YouTube: Related posts: Henri Cartier-Bresson: “The Impassioned Eye” documentary Remembering Henri Cartier-Bresson Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Ce

You can watch the "Pen, Brush and Camera" full length documentary (1998) about Henri Cartier-Bresson on YouTube:

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Its value as an out-of-print collectable has risen over the past few decades resulting in keeping this masterpiece out of the hands of many younger photographers. Finally, after 62 years, it is again seeing the light of day this December with a gorgeous facsimile from the German publishing house Steidl

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The primary (but hardly the sole) merit of this extraordinary Cartier-Bresson retrospective is that it sheds light on little-known aspects of his career. Too often Cartier-Bresson has been represented only as the artist of the “decisive moment,” as if his vision had emerged fully developed in one burst, and remained constant throughout his career. The reality, of course, is much more complex.

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In a 2010 interview with Charlie Rose, photographer Martine Franck gave an insight into how she first got together with her husband, renowned Magnum founder Henri Cartier-Bresson: “Martine,” Bresson had apparently said to Franck, by way of showing his romantic interest, “I want to come and see your contact sheets.”

In 1971, Sheila Turner-Seed interviewed Henri Cartier-Bresson and other luminaries for a series of film strips that were lost until her daughter rediscovered them decades later.

If you have little equipment, people don’t notice you. You don’t come like a show-off. It seems like an embarrassment, someone who comes with big equipment.