Henri Cartier-Bresson

Bresson was born in France on the 22 of August 1908 to a wealthy family.

Henri Cartier-Bresson described photography as being an extension of the eye as it means you can see the world around you more closely and more detail than the human eye. He saw the camera as being a part of himself as he had it on him always. He saw the action of photography as being similar to “hunting but without killing” where he is waiting and searching for the victim or the subject. He capture the millisecond of that time and movement and is known for joining people together through that rather than separating them.

Throughout his childhood he had a passion for reading and art. he began painting at just 5 years old. In 1927 he began at L’hote academy a private art school where his passion for art grew as they encouraged his ambitions of joining modern art and classical art. He began taking pictures with a brownie box camera at around the same age finding photography fascinating as it captured moments in time. He studied literature and art at the university of Cambridge where he learnt other languages. In 1929 Bresson met Harry Crosby a American who he became very close friends with however Crosby committed suicide two years later. In his grief Bresson escaped to Africa he worked by hunting and selling his kill to the local people he was not known for his photography of that time as only seven photographs survived his travels. He returned to France where he discovered his biggest inspiration Martin Munkacsi, a hungarian photographer born in 1896 and passed in 1963. His work persuaded Bresson in his decision to switch from pursuing painting to photography. He then bought his first Leica camera which became his signature equipment to capturing his most famous works discreetly. Due to its small size many of his subjects did not know their picture was being taken and therefore it avoided posing or politeness over the camera.

From there he travelled extensively until his work was discovered in 1933 by the Julien Levy gallery New York. By 1937 Bresson was married but two years later was drafted into the French military in the beginnings of WW2. Tragically he was captured by Nazi soldiers and spent over two years enslaved in a prisoner-of-war camp before escaping back to France where he began documenting WW2 with other photographers while helping other escapees. In 1947 his first book was published containing his photos from the period. The same year he joined a group of photographers who assigned each other to countries around the world to document the world as it was.

In 1952 Bresson had “The Decisive Moment” published which became known for the line “everything has a decisive moment”. In 1955 his first exhibition in France was held at Pavillon de Marsan. In 1970 he remarried to another photographer and had his only daughter two years later. In 1975 he accepted an honorary degree from Oxford University.

In 2003 he created the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation with his family he passed away in 2004 with no cause of death. In 2011 his most expensive piece sold for 590455 US dollars.

The decisive moment as Bresson describes it as is the moment you take the shot. The decision to do this has many factors such as timing positioning of the camera, photographer and subject. He looks at the relationship between the environment and subject. However the images have no way of correction so timing this is a hard skill. Bresson stated that the image did not class as a decisive moment if the image was posed as the subject had prepared for the image making it unnatural. All of his images are candid.

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