Cartier-Bresson centenary celebrated in France

Kunang Helmi-Picard ,  Contributor ,  Paris   |  Sun, 09/21/2008 9:48 AM  |  Arts & Design

The destinies of some people take unpredictable turns, like that of Henri Cartier-Bresson. His wealthy family took it for granted that he would work in the family textile business.

Famous photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson was born on Aug. 22, 1908, in Chanteloup, near Paris, as the eldest of five siblings. He died on Aug. 3, 2004, at Montjustin in Provence.

Although Cartier-Bresson did not finish high school at the Lycee Condorcet in Paris, he became a pioneering photojournalist and contributed toward establishing the importance of in-depth visual reportage.

Toward the end of his life, Cartier-Bresson was referred to as 'the eye of the century' and his advice on how to capture the 'decisive moment' is still followed by many aspiring photographers.

In 1923, drawn to painting and influenced by the budding cultural movement, Cartier-Bresson developed a passion for a surrealist attitude toward life. He studied painting in the Andr* Hotel's atelier in Montparnasse, a place where many artists congregated.

Despite his shyness, Cartier-Bresson was intensely interested in other people, with whom he discussed a wide range of subjects. He would always retain vivid interest in the pulse of global events -- including in Indonesia -- because of personal affinities.

An excellent hunter trained on family estates, the young man at 23 traveled to the Ivory Coast to earn a living as a hunter.

Paradoxically this adventure led to him taking his first real photos. After recovering from a very serious bout of sickness, he returned to France, where he discovered the now legendary, but then only recently invented, small-format Leica camera.

Because of its compact form and the possibility of capturing images swiftly on long rolls of film, the Leica was perfect for reporting. Cartier-Bresson explored the full range of its potential, turning it into his personal instrument and remaining inconspicuous while capturing images.

Cartier-Bresson soon realized the difficulties of earning a living as a professional photographer. Between 1925 and 1936 in Europe, photography was regarded either as an art form or illustrated news, neither one lucrative. He later acknowledged it was America that helped him attain recognition.

Avoiding the family name, he persisted in signing as simply Cartier or Carter for a long time.

The stubborn photographer spurned help from his family to further his career and later founded the Magnum Photos agency in 1947 with Robert Capa, David Seymour and George Rodger, to protect the commercial rights of photographers.

The period between 1943 and the early 1970s was the most profitable for photojournalists like Cartier-Bresson. After 1970, sales of exclusive photo prints became more substantial.

The first important show of his work was at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1933. Photography was by then already a recognized art form in the United States. Cartier could exchange his experience with fellow photographers there. He set off for a year in Mexico with Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo on a shoestring budget.

The second time his work was shown at the Julien Levy Gallery, in 1935, it was together with the works of Bravo and American Walker Evans. Evans himself had come to Paris in 1926 to study French literature at the Sorbonne and it was after this visit that he turned to photography, eventually going into documentary photography.

Cartier-Bresson was tempted to make films, following the example of Paul Strand, and later, Jean Renoir, but it was mainly due to Walker Evans' more socially oriented documentary images that he continued with photography after World War II.

The two met him again in 1947 when the Frenchman was in New York to complete an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

"If it had not been for the challenge of the work of Walker Evans, I don't think I would have remained a photographer," Cartier-Bresson once said.

This is the primary reason why the centenary exhibition combines the works of Walker Evans (1903-1975) and Henri Cartier-Bresson from the 1930s and 1940s in America.

The exhibition will run until December 21 at the HCB Foundation in Paris, with 86 vintage black and white prints on display.

The Walker Evans prints were lent by the American Getty Museum, MoMA and private collectors, while those by Cartier-Bresson come from his foundation's collection. All the images were taken between 1929 and 1947, either in urban environments in New York, Washington, Chicago and in California, or in the South, in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.

Some of Cartier-Bresson prints being showcased have never been shown before. One powerful image was taken in Brooklyn in 1947. With his head bowed down on a wooden restaurant table and his back hunched, a man symbolizes the darker side of life. The sparse geometrical structure of the image itself emphasizes the despair.

Among the Walker Evans images, Girl in Fulton Street, New York, taken during the depression of 1929, was one of Cartier-Bresson's favorites. Despite the surrounding gloom of a New York street, the girl looks chic and self-possessed.

The centenary celebrations include a two-part symposium about various aspects of Henri Cartier-Bresson's work and milieu, as well as book launches.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Photograph America 1929-1947. Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, 2 Impasse Lebouis, 75014 Paris.

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