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Henri Cartier-Bresson1908-2004

Ammar Jiwaji

Considered to be the father of modern photojournalism

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Chronology• 1908 - Born in Sicily

• 1923 - Develops interest in painting and surrealism

• 1931 - Spends the year in Ivory Coast and Travels and photographs in Europe

• 1934 - Spends a year in Mexico with an ethnographic expedition

• 1935 - Photographs New York with Paul Strand

• 1944-45 - Takes a series of portraits of Matisse, Picasso, Braque and others.

• 1946 - Works on ‘posthumous’ exhibition at MoMA

• 1947 - Co-founds Magnum Photos

• 1948-50 - Travels to the Far-East, India and China.

• 1952 - Published “The Decisive Moment”, cover by Matisse. His biggest breakthrough

• 1953 - 2004 - Continued to take on photojournalism projects around the world

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Tools

• Only used his 35mm Leica camera w/ 50mm lens

• Painted the camera’s shiny parts in black

• Never photographed with a flash

Photography is, for me, a spontaneous impulse coming from an ever attentive eye which captures the moment and its eternity.

- Henri Cartier-Bresson

Ivory Coast, 1931Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare Paris,

France 1932

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Brussels Belgium, 1932 Heyeres, France 1932

For he has the capacity to capture the precise moment when events make sense within the order of the logical universe...

- Jean Clair

Italy, 1933

Madrid, Spain, 1933 Madrid, Spain 1933

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The Decisive Moment Book Cover by Mattise1952

There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment

- Henri Cartier-Bresson

Trafalgar Square on the day of Coronotation of George IV, London, Great Britain 1937

Manhattan, New York, USA 1947

Kiss Dancers in a Trance, Batubulan, Bali, Indonesia, 1949

Funeral George IV, Trafalgar Square, London, Great Britain 1952

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The condensed form of thought that is the language of photography, has a great power [which is] that of a making a judgement on what we see, and that implies great responsibility

-Henri Cartier-Bresson

Demonstration, Paris, France 1958

Tarascon, France 1959 Berlin Wall, West Germany 1962

Bremen, West Germany 1962 For IBM, Man and Machine