Magnum Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and his works

1. “Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst”
H.C.B.

2. “To me, photography is the
simultaneous recognition, in a
fraction of a second, of the
significance of an event as well as
of a precise organisation of forms
which give that event its proper
expression”

3. “you just have to live and life will give you pictures”

4. “A photographer must
always work with the
greatest respect for his
subject and in terms of
his own point of view”

5. 1908, August 22

6. Chanteloup-en-Brie

8. Born the oldest of five children, to
Marthe Leverdier and André Cartier-
Bresson

9. His parents supported
him financially so
Henri could pursue
photography

10. Young Henri took holiday snapshots with
a Box Brownie

11. Educated in Paris, Cartier-Bresson developed an early love for
literature and the arts.

12. Cartier-Bresson began socializing with
the Surrealists and was drawn to the
Surrealist movement's technique of using
the subconscious and the immediate to
influence their work
Surrealist artists painted
unnerving, illogical scenes with
photographic precision, created
strange creatures from everyday
objects, and developed painting
techniques that allowed the
unconscious to express itself

13. Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika
In 1931, Henri became inspired
by a 1930 photograph by
Hungarian photojournalist
Martin Munkacsi , that inspired
him to stop painting and to take
up photography seriously. He
explained, "I suddenly understood
that a photograph could fix eternity
in an instant”

14. Cartier-Bresson always used a Leica 35
mm rangefinder camera fitted with a
normal 50 mm lens. He wrapped black
tape around the camera's chrome body to
make it less conspicuous.
He never photographed with flash, a
practice he saw as "impolite...like coming to a
concert with a pistol in your hand."

15. Cartier-Bresson's first photojournalist
photos to be published came in 1937 when he
covered the coronation of King George VI and
Queen Elizabeth, for the French weekly
Regards

18. He focused on the
new monarch's
adoring subjects
lining the London
streets, and took no
pictures of the
king.

19. In 1937, Cartier-Bresson
married a Javanese
dancer, Ratna Mohini

20. When World War II broke
out in September 1939,
Cartier-Bresson joined the
French Army as a Corporal
in the Film and Photo unit

21. Henri was captured by
German soldiers and spent 35
months in prisoner-of-war
camps doing forced labor
under the Nazis.

22. At the end of the war he was asked by the
American Office of War Information to make a
documentary, Le Retour (The Return) about
returning French prisoners and displaced persons.

23. Robert Capa
David Seymour
William Vandivert
George Rodger
In 1947, with
Henri Cartier-Bresson found

26. Cartier-Bresson achieved
international recognition
for his coverage of
Gandhi's funeral in India
in 1948

29. and the last stage of the
Chinese Civil War in
1949.

31. In 1950, Henri
visited
Tiruvannamalai, in
Tamil Nadu and
photographed the
last moments of
Ramana Maharishi,
Sri Ramana
Ashram and its
surroundings.

32. Henri believed in composing his photographs in the viewfinder, not in the darkroom. He had
all his photographs printed only at full-frame and completely free of any cropping, so as to
include a few millimeters of the unexposed negative around the image area, resulting in a
black frame around the developed picture.

33. Films
1969/70 Impressions of California
1969/70 Southern Exposures
1944/45 Le Retour (The Return)
1939 La Règle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game)
1938 L’Espagne vivra
1937 Victoire de la Vie (with Herbert Kline)
1936 Une Partie de Campagne

34. In 1952, Cartier-Bresson
published his book Images à
la sauvette, whose English-
language edition was titled
The Decisive Moment
a portfolio of 126 of his photos

35. "Photography is not like painting," Cartier-Bresson
told the Washington Post in 1957.
"There is a creative fraction of a second when you are
taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or
an expression that life itself offers you, and you must
know with intuition when to click the camera. That is
the moment the photographer is creative," he said.
"Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone
forever."

36. His other books are
A Propos De Paris
About Russia
America In Passing
Fotografiar Del Natural
From One China To the Other
Henri Cartier Bresson, Photographer
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson In India
Henri Cartier-Bresson the History Of Photography Series By Aperture
Man and Machine
Photographs By Cartier-Bresson
TTe TTe
The Decisive Moment
The Europeans
The Face Of Asia
The Mind's Eye
The People Of Moscow
The World Of Henri Cartier-Bresson

37. Awards
1986 Novecento Premio
1981 Grand Prix National de la Photographie
1975 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie
1975 Culture Prize
1964 Overseas Press Club of America Award
1960 Overseas Press Club of America Award
1959 Prix de la Société Française de Photographie
1954 Overseas Press Club of America Award
1953 A.S.M.P. Award
1948 Overseas Press Club of America Award

38. He married Magnum photographer Martine Franck,
thirty years younger than himself, in 1970

39. Cartier-Bresson retired from
photography in the early 1970s, and by
1975 no longer took pictures. He
returned to drawing and painting.

40. Cartier-Bresson died in Céreste on August 3, 2004, aged 95

41. Some of Henri Cartier-
Bresson’s iconic photos are

42. “The photograph itself doesn’t
interest me. I want only to
capture a minute part of reality.”
Time magazine,
“The Photo of the Century”
Derriere la Gare Saint- Lazare.

43. “The most difficult thing for
me is a portrait. You have
to try and put your camera
between the skin of a person
and his shirt.”
Eunuch

44. “It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made
with the eye, heart and head.”
Elephant Fight, Gujarat

45. Nehru announces Gandhi’s death
“Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing”

46. “For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity”
Three Women Combing Hair, Spain

47. "Time runs and flows and only our death can stop it.
The photograph is a guillotine blade that seizes one
dazzling instant in eternity."
In his preface to his book "I Tempi di Roma"

49. “I hope that we don’t ever see
the day when ready-made
photo system, which
guarantees good photographic
compositions in advance, go on
the market”