Biography of Henri Cartier-Bresson

Master of carpe diem

August 22, 1908
August 2, 2004
Many presentations are not required for who is known as the father of photography and has stopped in his shots almost a century of events. Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the most ardent purists of photography was born on August 22, 1908 in Chanteloup (France), 30 km east of Paris, to a family of high bourgeois friend of the arts. Initially he is interested only in painting (thanks to the influence of his uncle, established artist, who at the time was a bit like a spiritual father), and becomes a student of Jacques-Emile Blanche and André Lhote, attends the surrealists and triad, the great editor.
Since the beginning of the years ' 30 click permanently to marry photography. In 1931, only 23 years old, returned to France after one year in the Ivory Coast, Henri Cartier-Bresson discovers the joy of photographing, buy a Leica and set out on a journey that takes him to the South of France, in Spain, in Italy and in Mexico. The Leica with its handiness and 24x36mm film inaugurate a new way of relating to reality, are flexible tools that fit exceptionally well with the eye always mobile and sensitive of the photographer. The anxiety that gnaws at Cartier-Bresson in his journey through the images of the world led him to an insatiable curiosity, incompatible with the bourgeois environment that surrounds it, which does not tolerate the apathy and the closure, the smallness of horizons. In 1935 the USA began working for the movies with Paul Strand; in 1932 his first exhibition in the Julien Levy Gallery.
Back in France continued for some time to work in film with Jean Renoir and Jacques Becker, but in 1933 a trip to Spain offers him the chance to realize his first large photographs of reportage. And it is especially in the reportage that Cartier-Bresson puts into practice all his skill and he was able to apply his philosophy of "decisive moment": a road that would lead him to be easily recognizable, a trademark that distance mille miglia from packs of famous and constructed images. Has now become an important photographer. Captured in 1940 by the Germans, after 35 months of imprisonment and two attempted escapes, manages to escape from the camp and back to France in 1943, in Paris, where he photographed the liberation.
Here he joined the MNPGD, an underground movement that takes care of organizing the assistance for prisoners of war have escaped and sought after. After the war returns to the cinema and directed the film "Le Retour". In the years 1946-47 is in the United States, where photographer especially for Harper's Bazaar. In 1947 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York is set out, without his knowledge, an exhibition "posthumously"; It was reported that he had died during the war. In 1947 along with his friends Robert Capa, David "Chim" Seymour, George Rodger and William Vandivert (a handful of "adventurers moved by an ethics", as he liked to call them), he founded the cooperative of photographers Magnum Photos, destined to become the most important photo agency in the world. From 1948 to 1950 is in the far East. In 1952 he published "Images à la sauvette", a collection of his photos (with cover, no less, that of Matisse), that has an immediate and vast international echo. In 1955 opened his first major retrospective, which will travel around the world, at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
After a series of trips (Cuba, Mexico, India and Japan), from 1966 he devoted himself increasingly to the drawing. In recent years, are the countless awards received, as well as exhibitions and publications around the world have paid tribute to her extraordinary production of photographer and painter. Since 1988 the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris established the International Grand Prix of photography, entitled to him. Besides being universally recognized among the greatest photographers of the century, Henri Cartier-Bresson has been instrumental in the conceptualization of the Act of photographing, translated, inter alia in the already mentioned and famous definition of "decisive moment". Just before reaching the 96 years, died in Paris on August 2, 2004. The news has moved and been around the world just two days later, after the funeral.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.