Henri Cartier-Bresson: the Man, the Image, & the World

Afterimage, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Bruno Chalifour

Henri Cartier-Bresson: the Man, the Image, & the World by Robert Delpire Thames and Hudson, 2003/432 pp./$75 (hb).

On August 22, 2003, Henri Cartier-Bresson celebrated his 95th birthday. Instigated by his long-time friend, curator and publisher, Robert Delpire, a historical retrospective exhibition was organized this summer at the National Library of France in Paris. The show is currently in Spain and is scheduled to come and travel the US in 2004 and 2005. Released by Thames and Hudson, Henri Cartier-Bresson, the Man, the Image, and the World is the English version of Henri Cartier-Bresson: De qui s'agit-il?, the 432-page catalogue of the exhibition bearing the same title.

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Both the exhibition and its coffee-table "catalogue" are meant to be the comprehensive testimonies of a whole life dedicated to the transcription of a history of the twentieth century seen through an artist's eye, mind, and heart. In 1932, Cartier-Bresson who had studied cubist painting under Andre Lhote, and worked as a safari guide in Africa, discovered a brand new tool, a 35 mm camera. The Leica (model II then) was to become an extension of his eye. The book first displays those images of the early 1930s that rapidly established their author's reputation on both sides of the Atlantic, including some images that have never been published before. A thematic presentation follows: the iconic photographs that most of us know, from "Behind St Lazare Station, 1932," p. 59, and "Mexico, 1964," p. 112, two exemplary illustrations of the "Decisive Moment" to "Bords de Marne 1938," pp. 72-73, or "Ireland 1952," p. 88. After the icons came the USSR, the portraits? the USA, India, Bali, China. At the crossroad of genial limitation and serendipity, Cartier-Bresson was where key events of the century happened before anybody else.

Various quotes by poets, playwrights, philosophers give the reader a better sense of the set of values and principles underlying Cartier-Bresson's photography. The features that totally differentiate this book from Henri Cartier-Bresson Photographer (New York Graphic Society, 1979), the other HCB "bible" in size and content are chapters dedicated to Cartier-Bresson's drawings and films, a very extensive bibliography including articles and reviews, a list of his shows, even a family album including photographs of he who would not let people photograph him. All this makes Henri Cartier-Bresson: the Man, the Image, and the World a must in any public or personal library.