Henri Cartier-Bresson
1908–2004 · France
Forms meet the event.
The story
Trained in painting and close to Surrealist circles, Cartier-Bresson made the small camera a mobile tool of observation. A co-founder of Magnum, he reported around the world while pursuing photography attentive to the relationships between gesture and geometry. His books and exhibitions helped define a culture of the photographic moment. Yet his career cannot be reduced to a formula: portraits, history and drawing hold important places within it.
Understanding the work
Identify lines and masses before isolating the action. A gesture sometimes seems to resolve a composition, but the image also needs to be placed within a sequence and a context.
Key works and series
Images à la sauvette; reports from India and China; portraits.
Sources & further exploration
Works in collections.
10 recordsPhotographs to explore on museum and library websites, with titles, dates and processes. Each link opens the collection record and its image where one is available.
