Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) was a French humanist photographer who was considered a master of candid photography. He is considered to be the pioneer of the street photography genre. Cartier-Bresson has widely influenced many photographers throughout the years. His work is primarily black and white street photography and he takes photographs of image with lots of context in them, such as the location/background.

Analysis of Henri Cartier-Besson’s Work

In this photograph it appears that natural daylight has been used to capture it. This has allowed the faces and bodies of the children to contrast with the over-exposed background.  It appears that a deep depth of field has been used as all of the image is focused. It also appears that a quick shutter speed of 1/100-1/500 has been used to capture a photograph of the children playing with minimum blur. It appears that a medium ISO of possibly 1600 was used as the image is mostly bright but slightly noisy.

There is no colour in the image as it has a black and white filter over it – this black and white filter helps to create more contrast between the subjects and the background. There is a wide tonal range in this photograph ranging from the dark tone of the faces to the white tone of the environment. There is a dirty and dusty texture to this image and the subjects have dirt on their faces and the material all over the floor is pretty much dust – this helps to further emphasise the children’s life style. There is a slight 3D effect to this image as the subjects are at lots of different distances from the camera, the hole in the wall helps to separate the background and the foreground. There is no pattern or repetition in this image which reflects the environment of the subjects – they cannot predict if their village will be destroyed even further by war. There is no clear organisation of subjects to go along the lines of the rule thirds, this is suitable as there appears to be no organisation in the subject’s lives.

This photograph shows children playing in ruins in Seville, Spain in 1933. Even though the children in the image are quite young, they are unsupervised so it appears that this is quite normal, especially when considering the hard and aged faces of the young children.

It is a very well composed photograph because the curious but aged look on the children’s faces make the viewer wonder what they are thinking about and what they are going through. The photograph shows that in different places in the world, people have completely different lifestyles. It shows the innocence of the children but at the same time the hardship that they go through.

Magnum Agency

Magnum photos agency is an international photographic cooperative owned by its photographer-members. Cartier-Besson says “Magnum is a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually”. Henri Cartier-Besson was among one of the photographers that founded Magnum in 1947. Magnum has included photojournalists from across the world who have covered many historical events of the 20th century.