Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

French photographer Cartier-Bresson dead at 95 (A giant passes on)
AFP via Yahoo ^ | 8//5/04 | AFP

Posted on 08/05/2004 5:58:07 AM PDT by zarf

The notoriously reclusive co-founder of the Magnum photo agency died Tuesday in the Provence region in southern France. Liberation newspaper reported on its website that he was buried Wednesday at a private ceremony in Monjustin.

"He hadn't been eating for several days. He was getting weaker and weaker," a friend who requested anonymity told AFP.

"France has lost a genius photographer, a real master, one of the most talented artists of his generation and one of the most respected in the world," French President Jacques Chirac said in a statement.

Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres called Cartier-Bresson "a great artist and a great reporter, a humanist and a witness to the 20th century who travelled around the world with inexhaustible passion."

Born August 22, 1908 to a bourgeois family east of Paris, Cartier-Bresson took up the camera in the 1930s after first studying painting, and went on to become one of the pioneers of the new art form of photography.

Cartier-Bresson was credited with the idea of the "decisive moment" in photography, which he described as "the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression."

In 1947 he joined Robert Capa and David Seymour to found Magnum Photos, which for decades set the standard for photographic reportage around the world.

Armed with his trademark Leica, Cartier-Bresson documented the birth of Communism in China, the murder of Mahatma Gandhi in India and the Spanish Civil War.

Though many of his images are imbued with spirituality and reverence, he himself rejected organized religion.

"God is a world of guilt. With original sin we are guilty for being alive, it's monstrous. In any case I have never believed," he said in an AFP interview in April of last year.

Among the famous names who sat for him were Jean-Paul Sartre, Henri Matisse, Edith Piaf and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. He quit professional photography and Magnum in 1966 to concentrate on portraiture, landscapes and drawing.

Organizers of a Cartier-Bresson retrospective currently playing in Berlin said Wednesday they were considering extending the show, which was to run through August 15.

Last year in Paris, the National Library hosted a major retrospective of Cartier-Bresson's work, with tens of thousands of photography fans lining up to see some 350 images spanning four decades.

At the same time, the shy and soft-spoken photographer founded the Henri Cartier-Bresson foundation, dedicated to preserving his images for future generations and helping researchers and professionals in their work.

In the interview as the exhibit opened in April, Cartier-Bresson reflected on death, and how Asian or Latin cultures treat the issue in contrast to many in the West.

"We French don't think about it (death). We don't want to think about it," he said.

"But in India people think about it all the time. In Mexico, too. What I like about that country is that death is very much alive."


The notoriously reclusive co-founder of the Magnum photo agency died Tuesday in the Provence region in southern France. Liberation newspaper reported on its website that he was buried Wednesday at a private ceremony in Monjustin.

"He hadn't been eating for several days. He was getting weaker and weaker," a friend who requested anonymity told AFP.

"France has lost a genius photographer, a real master, one of the most talented artists of his generation and one of the most respected in the world," French President Jacques Chirac said in a statement.

Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres called Cartier-Bresson "a great artist and a great reporter, a humanist and a witness to the 20th century who travelled around the world with inexhaustible passion."

Born August 22, 1908 to a bourgeois family east of Paris, Cartier-Bresson took up the camera in the 1930s after first studying painting, and went on to become one of the pioneers of the new art form of photography.

Cartier-Bresson was credited with the idea of the "decisive moment" in photography, which he described as "the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression."

In 1947 he joined Robert Capa and David Seymour to found Magnum Photos, which for decades set the standard for photographic reportage around the world.

Armed with his trademark Leica, Cartier-Bresson documented the birth of Communism in China, the murder of Mahatma Gandhi in India and the Spanish Civil War.

Though many of his images are imbued with spirituality and reverence, he himself rejected organized religion.

"God is a world of guilt. With original sin we are guilty for being alive, it's monstrous. In any case I have never believed," he said in an AFP interview in April of last year.

Among the famous names who sat for him were Jean-Paul Sartre, Henri Matisse, Edith Piaf and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. He quit professional photography and Magnum in 1966 to concentrate on portraiture, landscapes and drawing.

Organizers of a Cartier-Bresson retrospective currently playing in Berlin said Wednesday they were considering extending the show, which was to run through August 15.

Last year in Paris, the National Library hosted a major retrospective of Cartier-Bresson's work, with tens of thousands of photography fans lining up to see some 350 images spanning four decades.

At the same time, the shy and soft-spoken photographer founded the Henri Cartier-Bresson foundation, dedicated to preserving his images for future generations and helping researchers and professionals in their work.

In the interview as the exhibit opened in April, Cartier-Bresson reflected on death, and how Asian or Latin cultures treat the issue in contrast to many in the West.

"We French don't think about it (death). We don't want to think about it," he said.

"But in India people think about it all the time. In Mexico, too. What I like about that country is that death is very much alive."




TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: cartierbresson; france; obituary; photography
What can be said. His work speaks for itself.
1 posted on 08/05/2004 5:58:08 AM PDT by zarf
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: zarf
I just googled him. I thought this one was wonderful.
2 posted on 08/05/2004 6:01:22 AM PDT by mewzilla
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: zarf; All
Telegraph obit.

Google image results.

3 posted on 08/05/2004 6:03:55 AM PDT by dighton
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: mewzilla
Yeah, that's the one I was going to link to. He was great! THIS one is great, too.
4 posted on 08/05/2004 6:08:13 AM PDT by aruanan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: zarf

Yes, really. His pictures were almost something out of time.

Looking for some book with pictures from Cartier-Bresson, I found a splendid book named "America : Pictures of a century".Your country certainly had - and has - great photographers. There was this gorgeous picture of a train station in New York, beautiful as a Greek temple. Pennsylvania station I think it was called.


5 posted on 08/05/2004 6:08:55 AM PDT by Atlantic Friend (Cursum Perficio)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: mewzilla

6 posted on 08/05/2004 6:09:12 AM PDT by 1rudeboy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: zarf
Here's an exhibition of Cartier-Bresson's work sponsored by Eastman-Kodak.
7 posted on 08/05/2004 6:10:47 AM PDT by aruanan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: aruanan

This past Christmas, I wanted to get my wife (and myself) a copy of The Decisive Moment, which I had owned as a teenager. It's completely unavailable.


8 posted on 08/05/2004 6:38:30 AM PDT by MoralSense
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: MoralSense
This past Christmas, I wanted to get my wife (and myself) a copy of The Decisive Moment, which I had owned as a teenager. It's completely unavailable.

Well, you could get it in the 2005 Henri Cartier-Bresson calendar for sale through Amazon.com. Let me look when I get over to the lab, but I think I have the website of a place that produces mounted photos. I know there's at least one I've seen by Bresson.
9 posted on 08/05/2004 6:57:58 AM PDT by aruanan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: MoralSense
...I wanted to get my wife (and myself) a copy of The Decisive Moment, which I had owned as a teenager. It's completely unavailable...

MoralSense - go over here... www.bookfinder.com

This is absolutely the best resource for bibliophiles on the net. You and your wife should have your copy 'in a week to ten days'.

10 posted on 08/05/2004 7:07:48 AM PDT by martin gibson
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

French and 95 - so I just had to google him in relation to "Vichy" :). Based on what I found:

On the good side, he was a complete anti-fascist, and was in a labor camp for three years before escaping and joining the Resistance. On the bad side, he was a French Communist in the years leading up to the war.

11 posted on 08/05/2004 7:18:27 AM PDT by vollmond (DS2 CV-66 83-87)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson