HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON: A BIOGRAPHY PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Pierre Assouline | 280 pages | 17 Nov 2005 | Thames & Hudson Ltd | 9780500512234 | English | London, United Kingdom Henri Cartier-Bresson: A Biography PDF Book View all Important Art. There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment. He started a tradition of testing new camera lenses by taking photographs of ducks in urban parks. Seville, Spain This photograph captures a group of children playing in the rubble in Seville, Spain. Not long after the war, Cartier-Bresson traveled east, spending considerable time in India, where he met and photographed Mahatma Gandhi shortly before his assassination in There, in the late s, he fell into Surrealist circles, and cultivated friendships with a number of cutting-edge artists and writers of the era. He took his first photographs when he traveled to Africa in , and he continued with this medium upon returning to Europe. Retrieved 11 September In the late s Cartier-Bresson began to concentrate on making motion pictures—including Impressions of California and Southern Exposures Henri Cartier-Bresson French, born August 22, —died August 3, was an influential artist and photographer of the 20th century. Upon his discharge, he headed to Africa to hunt big game. By the time of his first exhibition in France in , held at the Pavillion de Marsan in the prestigious Louvre Museum in Paris, Cartier-Bresson had acquired international acclaim, not the least for his candid portraits of notables such as William Faulkner, Truman Capote, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, and many others. It lent itself not only to spontaneity but to anonymity as well. It is the only photo that influenced me. Cartier-Bresson returned to France in , recuperating first in Marseille. In fact, he stopped carrying around his camera, which had been like an extension of his body for much of his adult life; he kept the camera in a safe where it remained, little used, in the last years of his life. It is at that moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy. The Washington Post. Encyclopedia of twentieth-century photography. Other articles you might like:. He was there for the Spanish Civil War and the Chinese revolution. Email address. Read artistic legacy. Paired with the aid of his Leica, Cartier-Bresson discovered the possibility of creating geometrical constructions in photography, structures that were enclosed within a perfect proportion of the frame. Take instead the label of 'photojournalist' and keep the other thing for yourself, in your heart of hearts. But the painting lessons were cut short when uncle Louis was killed in World War I. With this image, he succeeded in capturing what the Surrealist Andre Breton described as the consummate photograph: when '"shadow and prey mingled in a unique flash. After a strict Roman Catholic education, he rebelled against the bourgeois conventions of his upbringing, and duly took up the study of painting in Paris. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote. Updated and modified regularly [Accessed ] Copy to clipboard. Please enter a valid email address. Rencontres Arles. Minneapolis Institute of Art. In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. Cartier-Bresson used photography to create visual documents of remarkable spontaneity. M Dirac, ed. Henri Cartier-Bresson: Here and Now. Virus Photo. Get the latest news on the events, trends, and people that shape the global art market with our daily newsletter. Talking photography: Viewpoints on the art, craft and business. Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cartier-Bresson spent a year - from to - studying art and literature and also English at Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge in England. His photography career began when he was a small boy. Henri Cartier-Bresson: A Biography Writer By , he had been awarded the US Camera Prize for best reportage of the year for his coverage of Gandhi and another award from the prestigious Overseas Press Club for his pictures taken in Nanking and Shanghai. Modern motion is celebrated by the fact that it is forever stopped, the leaping man will never hit the puddle, the split-second image is permanently frozen in time. He became the first Western photographer to photograph "freely" in the post-war Soviet Union. The ambiguity of the picture space is a testament to Cartier-Bresson's engagement with Surrealism, of which visual puzzles were a major feature. Instead, in he left home to study at the private art academy of the French Cubist sculptor and painter, Andre Lhote, in Montparnasse. London: The Daily Telegraph. The Surrealists recognized in plain photographic fact an essential quality that had been excluded from prior theories of photographic realism. History at your fingertips. Observer London , August 8, , p. Lawrence River and giving Canada its name. He held his first exhibition of drawings at the Carlton Gallery in New York in There, he contracted a deadly fever, and sent his family a postcard with instructions for his funeral. A year later Cartier-Bresson bought his first Leica camera. In Cartier-Bresson went to the University of Cambridge , where he studied literature and painting. French explorer Jacques Cartier is known chiefly for exploring the St. Uninterested in actually eating what he'd tracked down, Cartier-Bresson eventually grew tired of the sport and gave it up. To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. In , Cartier-Bresson's air squadron commandant placed him under house arrest for hunting without a licence. Two years after Harry Crosby died by suicide, Cartier-Bresson's affair with Caresse Crosby ended in , leaving him broken-hearted. Cartier-Bresson subsequently made three documentaries in support of Republican Spain. With this image, he succeeded in capturing what the Surrealist Andre Breton described as the consummate photograph: when '"shadow and prey mingled in a unique flash. As a photographer he felt indebted to the great films he saw as a youth. Henri Cartier-Bresson was born on August 22, But the painting lessons were cut short when uncle Louis was killed in World War I. Other photographers marveled at what seemed to be his extraordinary luck in getting a perfect, emotionally incisive shot, and Cartier-Bresson called this "the decisive moment," which was also the English-language title of his book, Images a la Sauvette. Cartier-Bresson's first photojournalist photos to be published came in when he covered the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth , [15] for the French weekly Regards. Upon his discharge, he headed to Africa to hunt big game. Cartier-Bresson joined the army but was soon captured by German forces and forced into prison-of-war camp for the next three years. Cartier-Bresson believed that what went on beneath the surface was nobody's business but his own. Influences on Artist. In Shanghai, he often worked in the company of photojournalist Sam Tata , whom Cartier-Bresson had previously befriended in Bombay. Henri Cartier-Bresson French , — Paired with the aid of his Leica, Cartier-Bresson discovered the possibility of creating geometrical constructions in photography, structures that were enclosed within a perfect proportion of the frame. His equipment load was often light: a 50mm lens and if he needed it, a longer 90mm lens. The Art Story. Henri Matisse was a revolutionary and influential artist of the early 20th century, best known for the expressive color and form of his Fauvist style. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. The Museum of Fine Arts. Ottawa, Although photography was not yet of particular interest to Cartier-Bresson at that time, he watched several films, including seminal ones by D. Literary Kicks. After documenting the end of war in some famously compelling images, Cartier-Bresson went on to become one of the founders of the Magnum photo agency in Inspired by what he saw, Cartier-Bresson abandoned photography and returned to France where he took work as an assistant with French filmmaker Jean Renoir. From to , Cartier- Bresson studied art, literature, and English at the University of Cambridge , where he became bilingual. Death Henri Cartier-Bresson took his last breath August 3rd, Just before WWII, he travelled to New York where he spent a year learning the principles of montage from the modernist photographer Paul Strand and had his first photography exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in Archived from the original on In , Cartier-Bresson quit Magnum and began to turn his focus to where it had once been: on drawing and painting. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Henri Cartier-Bresson: A Biography Reviews User Contributions:. So much did Cartier-Bresson wish to remain a silent, and even unseen, witness, that he covered the bright chromium parts of his camera with black tape to render it less visible, and he sometimes hid the camera under a handkerchief. The Surrealists approached photography in the same way that Aragon and Breton Though his eye for composition was extraordinary, Cartier-Bresson preferred to describe the medium as the moment when the eye, the head, and the heart aligned. He also photographed the last surviving Imperial eunuchs in Beijing, as the city was falling to the communists. Cartier-Bresson's rise as a photographer proved rapid. In , he was divorced from his first wife of 30 years, Ratna "Elie". Paris: Nautilus, Groumbursch, Ernst H. The couple divorced 30 years later. He often joked that he had no imagination, which was why he had failed at painting and abandoned a brief fling with filmmaking in the s. Minneapolis Institute of Art. His father was a wealthy textile manufacturer, whose Cartier-Bresson thread was a staple of French sewing kits.