“I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant.“

~Henri Cartier Bresson~

The Early Years

Cartier-Bresson was born on August 22, 1908, at Chanteloup, near Paris.  His father was a respected and wealthy textile merchant, and he was given a strict Roman Catholic education.  Cartier-Bresson’s uncle was an accomplished painter, and under his influence, he studied in Paris with Cubist painter and sculptor Andre Lhote from 1927-28.  In 1929 Cartier-Bresson studied literature and painting at the University of Cambridge.  While, as a young boy, he had used a Box Brownie, it wasn’t until 1930, after seeing the work of Eugene Atget and Man Ray, that he took a serious interest in photography.

In 1931, during a year on the Ivory Coast, he began recording his experiences.  While on the Ivory Coast, he contracted blackwater fever (a form of malaria).  Fearing he was dying, he sent a letter home instructing his grandfather to bury him in Normandy while Debussy’s String Quartet was played. His uncle replied his grandfather “finds it expensive and prefers that you return home first”. Fortunately, Cartier-Bresson recovered.

The Unseen Photographer

In 1932 Cartier-Bresson purchased his first 35mm Leica.  The small size appealed to him, as he wished to remain silent and unseen when taking photographs. To become even more anonymous in the scene, he covered the bright silver parts of the camera with black tape to make it even less visible.  On occasion, he even hid the camera under a handkerchief. Throughout his life, Cartier-Bresson mainly stuck to three fixed lenses – 35mm, 50mm and 135mm.

Between 1932 and 1935, he travelled throughout Eastern Europe, Spain and Mexico. In 1932 Cartier-Bresson took two of his most famous images –  The cyclist caught gliding down a cobbled hill at the base of some stone steps in Hyères and The man jumping over a puddle behind the Gare Saint-Lazare.

His first photojournalism images were published in 1937 when, under assignment from the French weekly Regards, he covered the coronation of King George IV and Queen Elizabeth. However, Cartier-Bresson photographed the crowds and people, not taking a single image of the King and Queen. Also, that year, he married a Javanese dancer named Ratna Mohini.  They divorced 30 years later.

The War years

Cartier-Bresson joined the French Army’s photographic unit at the outbreak of WWII as a corporal.  His work, at this time, involved filming and photographing artillery fire, road bombardments and troop movements.  However, in 1940, he was taken prisoner by the Germans. After three attempts, he escaped in 1943 and returned to France with forged papers. 

Before being captured, he had buried his beloved Leica on a farm in France near the Vosges mountains. So one of the first things he did after escaping was to return to the farm, dig up his camera, and return to Paris to join the resistance. Finally, after four years of occupation, on August 19, 1944, French Resistance forces and Allied troops began their liberation of Paris.  Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Rodger (who would come to be three of the four founders of Magnum Photos) were all there recording the retreat.  They documented the historic scenes as the city transformed from a place of oppression to one of freedom.

Founding Magnum

In 1945, Cartier-Bresson and the U.S. photographer Robert Capa, David Seymour and Ernst Haas founded the photographers’ cooperative Magnum Photos.  The photographers owned the rights to their images, a novel concept at the time.  Under the umbrella of Magnum, Cartier-Bresson concentrated more than ever on photojournalism.  He travelled through India, China, Indonesia, and Egypt.

“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.”

~Henri Cartier-Bresson~

Like Margaret Bourke-White, he was in India to photograph India’s independence from Britain. While there, he photographed Mahatma Gandhi barely 15 minutes before Gandhi was assassinated. The material from those years, plus Europe in the 1950s, became the subjects of several books published between 1952 and 1956. These publications cemented Cartier-Bresson’s reputation as a master of his craft.

Fame and Glory

In 1955, France honoured him when a retrospective exhibition of 400 of his photographs was held at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris.  The show then travelled through Europe, the United States, and Japan.  At the end of the exhibition, the photographs were consigned to the Bibliothèque Nationale (National Library) in Paris for posterity. He was also awarded the Overseas Press Club Award and Prix de la Societe Francaise de Photographie.

In 1963 he travelled to and photographed in Cuba, followed by Mexico in 1964 and India in 1965. Then, during the student revolt in Paris in May 1968, he was there with his 35-mm camera. In 1966, after being a photographer for 30 years, he left Magnum and gave up the camera. For the rest of his life, he concentrated on landscapes and portraiture, but with a pen and paintbrush.  In 1967 he married Magnum photographer Martine Franck, and the couple had one daughter, Melanie.

“I have always been passionate about painting,” writes Cartier-Bresson. “As a child, I painted on Thursdays and Sundays, and dreamed about it every other day.”

~Henri Cartier-Bresson~

Cartier-Bresson died in Montjustin (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France) on August 3, 2004, aged 95. No cause of death was announced. His wife, Martine Cartier-Besson, passed away in 2012 from Leukemia.

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