Henri Cartier-Bresson (22 August 1908 – 3 August 2004) Born in Chanteloup, Seine-et-Marne, Henri Cartier-Bresson developed a strong fascination with painting, particularly with Surrealism. From 1928 to 1929, Cartier-Bresson studied art, literature, and English at the University of Cambridge.
From 1930-1933 Henri Cartier‑Bresson decided to go travelling around Europe with his friend, the writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues, set off in an old second-hand Buick through Europe. In 1931, Henri Cartier-Bresson armed with the Krauss camera and a wooden glass plate camera, he mostly took rather static shots of flea markets, ghettos and shop fronts. On his return to France, he bought a Leica which never left his side.
In 1933, accompanied by Leonor Fini. This time, the three chose Italy then Spain; a three-month perambulation. The trip to Spain seems to pass in the same spirit but marks a stage in Cartier‑Bresson’s professional career. During this trip, he got his first exhibition at Club Ateneo in Madrid, had his first sales of prints thanks to a solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery (New York) and did his first photographic commission on the Spanish elections for VU magazine; this led to a publication in three episodes.
Taken prisoner of war in 1940, he escaped on his third attempt in 1943 and subsequently joined an underground organization to assist prisoners and escapees. In 1945, he photographed the Liberation of Paris with a group of professional journalists and then filmed the documentary Le Retour (The Return).
Cartier-Bresson was one of the founding members of Magnum Photos in 1947, with Robert Capa, George Rodger, David “Chim” Seymour, and William Vandivert. After three years spent travelling in the East, he returned to Europe in 1952, where he published his first book, Images à la Sauvette (published in English as The Decisive Moment).
He explained his approach to photography in these terms, “for me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously… It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.”
In 1968, he began to curtail his photographic activities, preferring to concentrate on drawing and painting. In 2003, with his wife and daughter, he created the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris for the preservation of his work. Cartier-Bresson received an extraordinary number of prizes, awards, and honorary doctorates. He died at his home in Provence on August 3, 2004, a few weeks short of his 96th birthday.
