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82-478: Two notable shows were Henri Cartier-Bresson - A Retrospective , work by Henri Cartier-Bresson , and Richard Avedon - Photographs 1946–2004 , a major retrospective of Richard Avedon . In summer 2016, Foam presented a major Helmut Newton retrospective exhibition. The museum contains a café, a library, a bookshop, and a commercial gallery called Foam Editions. The museum also publishes a quarterly international photography magazine called Foam Magazine. The museum

164-419: A Box Brownie ; he later experimented with a 3×4 inch view camera . He was raised in traditional French bourgeois fashion, and was required to address his parents with formal vous rather than tu. His father assumed that his son would take up the family business, but Henri was strong-willed and also feared this prospect. Cartier-Bresson attended École Fénelon, a Catholic school that prepared students for

246-532: A Leica 35 mm rangefinder camera fitted with a normal 50 mm lens, or occasionally a wide-angle lens for landscapes. He often wrapped black tape around the camera's chrome body to make it less conspicuous. With fast black and white film and sharp lenses, he was able to photograph events unnoticed. No longer bound by a 4×5 press camera or a medium format twin-lens reflex camera , miniature-format cameras gave Cartier-Bresson what he called "the velvet hand...the hawk's eye." He never photographed with flash,

328-746: A classic example of Cartier-Bresson's ability to capture a decisive moment. He held his first exhibition in France at the Pavillon de Marsan in 1955. Cartier-Bresson's photography took him to many places, including China, Mexico, Canada, the United States, India, Japan, Portugal and the Soviet Union. While traveling in China in 1958, Cartier-Bresson documented the construction of the Ming Tombs Reservoir . He became

410-865: A current of humanism in photography, first begun in the early 20th century by Jacob Riis , then Lewis Hine , followed by the FSA and the New York Photo League [see the Harlem Project led by Aaron Siskind ] photographers exhibited at Limelight gallery. Books were published such as those by Dorothea Lange and Paul Taylor ( An American Exodus , 1939), Walker Evans and James Agee ( Let Us Now Praise Famous Men , 1941), Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell ( You Have Seen Their Faces , 1937), Arthur Rothstein and William Saroyan ( Look At Us ,... , 1967). The seminal work by Robert Frank , The Americans published in France in 1958 ( Robert Delpire ) and

492-804: A daughter, Mélanie, in May 1972. He held his first exhibition of drawings at the Carlton Gallery in New York in 1975. Cartier-Bresson died in Céreste ( Alpes-de-Haute-Provence , France) on 3 August 2004, 19 days before his 96th birthday. No cause of death was announced. He was buried in the local cemetery nearby in Montjustin and was survived by his wife, Martine Franck, and daughter, Mélanie. Cartier-Bresson spent more than three decades on assignment for Life and other journals. He traveled without bounds, documenting some of

574-519: A fashion assignment, but he fared poorly since he had no idea how to direct or interact with the models. Nevertheless, Snow was the first American editor to publish Cartier-Bresson's photographs in a magazine. While in New York, he met photographer Paul Strand , who did camerawork for the Depression-era documentary The Plow That Broke the Plains . When he returned to France, Cartier-Bresson applied for

656-420: A fledgling, shy and frail, and mild as whey." Embracing the open sexuality offered by Crosby and his wife Caresse , Cartier-Bresson fell into an intense sexual relationship with her that lasted until 1931. Two years after Harry Crosby died by suicide, Cartier-Bresson's affair with Caresse Crosby ended in 1931, leaving him broken-hearted. During conscription he read Conrad 's Heart of Darkness . This gave him

738-549: A job with renowned French film director Jean Renoir . He acted in Renoir's 1936 film Partie de campagne and in the 1939 La Règle du jeu , for which he served as second assistant and played a butler. Renoir made Cartier-Bresson act so he could understand how it felt to be on the other side of the camera. Cartier-Bresson also helped Renoir make a film for the Communist party on the 200 families, including his own, who ran France. During

820-761: A large studio with a small bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom where Cartier-Bresson developed film. When World War II broke out in September 1939, Cartier-Bresson joined the French Army as a Corporal in the film and photo unit of the French Third Army. During the Battle of France , in June 1940 at St. Dié in the Vosges Mountains, he was captured by German soldiers and spent 35 months in prisoner-of-war camps doing forced labor under

902-412: A practice he saw as "impolite...like coming to a concert with a pistol in your hand." He believed in composing his photographs in the viewfinder, not in the darkroom. He showcased this belief by having nearly all his photographs printed only at full-frame and completely free of any cropping or other darkroom manipulation. He insisted that his prints be left uncropped so as to include a few millimeters of

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984-696: A prominent or self-evident role. After the opening exhibition the museum closed for renovation. Architects BenthemCrouwel turned three buildings at the Keizersgracht into a modern museum. The first exhibition in the new museum, was called Regie: Paul Huf , Paul Huf together with Eva Besnyö being the originator of the museum. The official opening took place on 6 June 2002. The exhibition was visited by approximately 8000 people. Every year, Foam organises four large exhibitions by particularly notable photographers, usually running for about three months. In conjunction, about 16 shorter running exhibitions are organised by

1066-411: A reaction to the atrocities of the trenches, Paris became a haven for intellectual, cultural and artistic life, attracting artists from the whole of Europe and the United States. With the release of the first Leica and Contax range-finder cameras, photographers took to the street and documented life by day and night. Such photographers as André Kertész , Brassaï , Henri Cartier-Bresson emerged during

1148-524: A single photographer, who would be credited alongside the journalist, or who provided written copy as well as images. Iconic books appeared including Doisneau 's Banlieue de Paris (1949), Izis 's Paris des rêves (1950), Willy Ronis ' Belleville‐Ménilmontant (1954), and Cartier‐Bresson's Images à la sauvette (1952); better known by its English title, which defines the photographic orientation of all these photographers, The Decisive Moment ). National and international exposure of humanist photography

1230-709: A sly humor, a warm enthusiasm ... and convincing aliveness'. In turn, this exposure in The Family of Man inspired a new generation of humanist photographers. The British, exposed to much the same threats and conflict as the rest of Europe during the first half of the century, in their popular magazine Picture Post (1938–1957) did much to promote the humanist imagery of Bert Hardy , Kurt Hutton , Felix H. Man (aka Hans Baumann), Francis Reiss , Thurston Hopkins , John Chillingworth, Grace Robertson , and Leonard McCombe, who eventually joined Life Magazine's staff. Its founder Stefan Lorant explained his motivation; “Father

1312-402: A sub-class of reportage, as it is concerned more broadly with everyday human experience, to witness mannerisms and customs, than with newsworthy events, though practitioners are conscious of conveying particular conditions and social trends, often, but not exclusively, concentrating on the underclasses or those disadvantaged by conflict, economic hardship or prejudice. Humanist photography "affirms

1394-672: A variety of European languages, would work in Europe. Cartier-Bresson would be assigned to India and China. Vandivert, who had also left Life, would work in America, and Capa would work anywhere that had an assignment. Maria Eisner managed the Paris office and Rita Vandivert, Vandivert's wife, managed the New York office and became Magnum's first president. Cartier-Bresson achieved international recognition for his coverage of Gandhi 's funeral in India in 1948 and

1476-579: Is a photography magazine published three times a year. Each issue is dedicated to a specific theme that is explored through work by both world-renowned image makers and newer, emerging talents. Accompanying essays, interviews and opinions by experts in the field come together to shape an in-depth and critical conversation. Foam Magazine has been the recipient of several awards for its high-grade graphic design and quality of content. Henri Cartier-Bresson Henri Cartier-Bresson ( French: [ɑ̃ʁi kaʁtje bʁɛsɔ̃] ; 22 August 1908 – 3 August 2004)

1558-483: Is in the historic Grachtengordel neighborhood of Amsterdam, across the Keizergracht from Museum Van Loon . The building in which Foam is located has a history dating back to Carel Joseph Fodor (1801–1860). Fodor first bought Keizersgracht 611, and later also bought the adjacent warehouse and residential house at Keizersgracht 609. Fodor destined the warehouse in his testament as the exhibition space that should receive

1640-530: Is not like painting," Cartier-Bresson told the Washington Post in 1957. "There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative", he said. "Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever." The photo Rue Mouffetard, Paris , taken in 1954, has since become

1722-404: Is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment"). Cartier-Bresson applied this to his photographic style. He said: "Photographier: c'est dans un même instant et en une fraction de seconde reconnaître un fait et l'organisation rigoureuse de formes perçues visuellement qui expriment et signifient ce fait" ("To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of

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1804-413: Is strongly apparent in W. Eugene Smith 's 1950s development of the photo essay, street photography by Helen Levitt , Vivian Maier et al., and later the work by Bruce Davidson (incl. his East 100th Street) , Eugene Richards, and Mary-Ellen Mark from the 50s into the 90s. The W. Eugene Smith Award continues to award humanitarian and humanist photography. Typically humanist photographers harness

1886-411: Is up to us to apply them to our technique, to improve ourselves, but there is a whole group of fetishes which have developed on the subject of technique. Technique is important only insofar as you must master it in order to communicate what you see... The camera for us is a tool, not a pretty mechanical toy. In the precise functioning of the mechanical object perhaps there is an unconscious compensation for

1968-442: The dérive accords with the working method of the humanist street photographer . Humanist photography emerged and spread after the rise of the mass circulation picture magazines in the 1920s and as photographers formed fraternities such as Le Groupe des XV (which exhibited annually 1946-1957), or joined agencies which promoted their work and fed the demand of the newspaper and magazine audiences, publishers and editors before

2050-672: The Cubist painter and sculptor André Lhote . Lhote's ambition was to integrate the Cubists' approach to reality with classical artistic forms; he wanted to link the French classical tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David to Modernism . Cartier-Bresson also studied painting with society portraitist Jacques Émile Blanche . During that period, he read Dostoevsky , Schopenhauer , Rimbaud , Nietzsche , Mallarmé , Freud , Proust , Joyce , Hegel , Engels and Marx . Lhote took his pupils to

2132-638: The Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1933, and subsequently at the Ateneo Club in Madrid. In 1934 in Mexico, he shared an exhibition with Manuel Álvarez Bravo . In the beginning, he did not photograph much in his native France. It would be years before he photographed there extensively. In 1934, Cartier-Bresson met a young Polish intellectual, a photographer named David Szymin who was called "Chim" because his name

2214-546: The Louvre to study classical artists and to Paris galleries to study contemporary art. Cartier-Bresson's interest in modern art was combined with an admiration for the works of the Renaissance masters: Jan van Eyck , Paolo Uccello , Masaccio , Piero della Francesca . Cartier-Bresson regarded Lhote as his teacher of "photography without a camera." Although Cartier-Bresson became frustrated with Lhote's "rule-laden" approach to art,

2296-689: The Lycée Condorcet . A governess called "Miss Kitty" who came from across the Channel, instilled in him the love of - and competence in - the English language. The proctor caught him reading a book by Rimbaud or Mallarmé , and reprimanded him, "Let's have no disorder in your studies!". Cartier-Bresson said, "He used the informal 'tu', which usually meant you were about to get a good thrashing. But he went on, 'You're going to read in my office.' Well, that wasn't an offer he had to repeat." He studied painting when he

2378-695: The Netherlands , emerged from the dark period of the Occupation (1940–4), the liberation of Paris in August 1944 released photographers to respond to reconstruction and the Fourth Republic 's (1947–59) drive to redefine a French identity after war, defeat, occupation, and collaboration, and to modernise the country. For photographers the experience had been one in which the Nazi authorities censored all visual expression and

2460-530: The School of Humanist Photography , manifests the Enlightenment philosophical system in social documentary practice based on a perception of social change. It emerged in the mid-twentieth-century and is associated most strongly with Europe, particularly France , where the upheavals of the two world wars originated, though it was a worldwide movement. It can be distinguished from photojournalism , with which it forms

2542-586: The Spanish Civil War , Cartier-Bresson co-directed an anti-fascist film with Herbert Kline , to promote the Republican medical services. Cartier-Bresson's first photojournalist photos to be published came in 1937 when he covered the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth , for the French weekly Regards. He focused on the new monarch's adoring subjects lining the London streets, and took no pictures of

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2624-500: The Vichy carefully controlled those who remained; and who eked out a living with portraiture and commercial, officially endorsed editorial photography, though individuals joined the Resistance from 1941, including Robert Capa, Cartier-Bresson, and Jean Dieuzaide, with several forging passes and documents (amongst whom were Robert Doisneau , Hans Bellmer , and Adolfo Kaminsky ). Paris

2706-478: The street or in the bistro primarily in black‐and‐white in available light with the popular small cameras of the day, these image-makers discovered what the writer Pierre Mac Orlan (1882-1970) called the 'fantastique social de la rue' (social fantasticality of the street) and their style of image making rendered romantic and poetic the way of life of ordinary European people, particularly in Paris. The preoccupation with everyday life emerged after World War I . As

2788-562: The 1930s. The late 1940s and 50s saw a further influx of foreign photographers sympathetic to this movement, including Ed van der Elsken from the Netherlands who recorded the interactions at the bistrot Chez Moineau, the dirt-cheap refuge of bohemian youths and of Guy Debord , Michele Bernstein , Gil J. Wolman , Ivan Chtcheglov and the other members of the Letterist International and the emerging Situationists whose theory of

2870-588: The 35mm Contax (1936). They revolutionized the practice of documentary photography and reportage by enabling the photographer to shoot quickly and unobtrusively in all conditions, to seize the "decisive moment" which Cartier-Bresson defined as "the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes" and thus support Cornell Capa 's notion of "concerned photography", described as "work committed to contributing to or understanding humanity's well-being". The humanist current continued into

2952-470: The European photography in the show. Steichen said that based on his experience of meeting photographers in Europe as he sought images of ‘everydayness' which he defined as 'the beauty of the things that fill our lives', for the exhibition, that the French were the only photographers who had thoroughly photographed scenes of daily life. These were practitioners he admired for their conveying 'tender simplicity,

3034-593: The French language title actually translates as " images on the sly " or "hastily taken images", Images à la sauvette included a portfolio of 126 of his photos from the East and the West. The book's cover was drawn by Henri Matisse . For his 4,500-word philosophical preface, Cartier-Bresson took his keynote text from Volume 2 of the Memoirs of 17th century Cardinal de Retz , "Il n'y a rien dans ce monde qui n'ait un moment decisif" ("There

3116-530: The Gare Saint-Lazare , are of seemingly unimportant moments of ordinary daily life. Cartier-Bresson did not like to be photographed and treasured his privacy. Photographs of Cartier-Bresson are scant. When he accepted an honorary degree from Oxford University in 1975, he held a paper in front of his face to avoid being photographed. In a Charlie Rose interview in 2000, Cartier-Bresson noted that it wasn't necessarily that he hated to be photographed, but it

3198-658: The Nazis . He twice tried and failed to escape from the prison camp, and was punished by solitary confinement . His third escape was successful and he hid on a farm in Touraine before getting false papers that allowed him to travel in France . In France, he worked for the underground, aiding other escapees and working secretly with other photographers to cover the occupation and then the liberation of France . In 1943, he dug up his beloved Leica camera, which he had buried in Vosges farmland . At

3280-516: The Shadow of Things by Leonie Purchas , and Calais - From Jungle to City by Henk Wildschut. Street photography exhibitions have included Helen Levitt 's In the Street , a retrospective by Weegee and Tom Wood ’s Photieman . Portrait or glamour exhibitions have included Chemises by Malick Sidibé , People of the 20th Century by August Sander and Blessings from Mousganistan by Mous Lamrabat . Under

3362-631: The Surrealists at the Café Cyrano, in the Place Blanche. He met a number of the movement's leading protagonists, and was drawn to the Surrealist movement's technique of using the subconscious and the immediate to influence their work. The historian Peter Galassi explains: The Surrealists approached photography in the same way that Aragon and Breton ...approached the street: with a voracious appetite for

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3444-558: The USA the following year (Grove Press), the result of his two Guggenheim grants, can also be considered an extension of the humanist photography current in the USA which had a demonstrable impact on American photography. In spite of the Red Scare and McCarthyism in the 1950s (which banned the Photo League) a humanist ethos and vision was promoted by The Family of Man exhibition world tour, and

3526-581: The advent of television broadcasting which rapidly displaced these audiences at the close of the 1960s. These publications include the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung , Vu , Point de Vue , Regards , Paris Match , Picture Post , Life , Look , Le Monde illustré , Plaisir de France and Réalités which competed to give ever larger space to photo-stories; extended articles and editorials that were profusely illustrated, or that consisted solely of photographs with captions, often by

3608-428: The anxieties and uncertainties of daily endeavor. In any case, people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing. He started a tradition of testing new camera lenses by taking photographs of ducks in urban parks. He never published the images but referred to them as 'my only superstition' as he considered it a 'baptism' of the lens. Humanist photography Humanist Photography , also known as

3690-464: The book's texts. In early 1947, Cartier-Bresson, with Robert Capa , David Seymour , William Vandivert and George Rodger founded Magnum Photos . Capa's brainchild, Magnum was a cooperative picture agency owned by its members. The team split photo assignments among the members. Rodger, who had quit Life in London after covering World War II, would cover Africa and the Middle East. Chim, who spoke

3772-482: The concepts, he couldn't express them; dissatisfied with his experiments, he destroyed most of his early paintings. From 1928 to 1929, Cartier-Bresson studied art, literature, and English at the University of Cambridge , where he became bilingual. In 1930, he was conscripted into the French Army and stationed at Le Bourget near Paris, a time about which he later remarked: "And I had quite a hard time of it, too, because I

3854-634: The denominator Foam_3h , small shows by young photographers are presented under the Foam library. Recent examples include Control by Emilie Hudig and A Place to Wash the Heart by Monieka Bielskyte . Since 2007, Foam has been organising the Paul Huf Award, a prize that is awarded to a young, talented photographer under the age of 35. The award was at one time known as the KLM Paul Huf Award. Foam Magazine

3936-670: The edge of the Eawy Forest while Debussy 's String Quartet was played. Although Cartier-Bresson took a portable camera (smaller than a Brownie Box) to Côte d'Ivoire, only seven photographs survived the tropics. Returning to France, Cartier-Bresson recuperated in Marseille in late 1931 and deepened his relationship with the Surrealists. He became inspired by a 1930 photograph by Hungarian photojournalist Martin Munkacsi showing three naked young African boys, caught in near-silhouette, running into

4018-571: The end of the war he was asked by the American Office of War Information to make a documentary, Le Retour (The Return) about returning French prisoners and displaced persons . His film spurred a retrospective of his work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) , that would later tour the country. The show debuted in 1947 accompanied by the publication of his first book, The Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Lincoln Kirstein and Beaumont Newhall wrote

4100-491: The first Western photographer to photograph "freely" in the post-war Soviet Union. In 1962, on behalf of Vogue , he went to Sardinia for about twenty days. There he visited Nuoro, Oliena, Orgosolo Mamoiada Desulo, Orosei, Cala Gonone, Orani (hosted by his friend Costantino Nivola ), San Leonardo di Siete Fuentes, and Cagliari. Cartier-Bresson withdrew as a principal of Magnum (which still distributes his photographs) in 1966 to concentrate on portraiture and landscapes. He

4182-632: The foundation relocated from the Montparnasse district to Le Marais . The highest price reached by one of his photographs was when Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare sold at Christie's , on 17 November 2011, by $ 590,455. Cartier-Bresson's photographs were also influential in the development of cinéma vérité film. In particular, he is credited as the inspiration for the National Film Board of Canada 's early work in this genre with its 1958 Candid Eye series. Cartier-Bresson almost always used

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4264-565: The gaining of independence from the Dutch. In 1950, Cartier-Bresson had traveled to the South India. He had visited Tiruvannamalai , a town in the Indian State of Tamil Nadu and photographed the last moments of Ramana Maharishi , Sri Ramana Ashram and its surroundings. A few days later he also visited and photographed Sri Aurobindo, Mother and Sri Aurobindo Ashram , Pondicherry. Magnum's mission

4346-532: The great upheavals of the 20th century — the Spanish Civil War , the liberation of Paris in 1944, the fall of the Kuomintang in China to the communists, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the May 1968 events in Paris, the Berlin Wall. And along the way he paused to document portraits of Camus , Picasso , Colette , Matisse , Pound and Giacometti . But many of his most renowned photographs, such as Behind

4428-402: The idea of a universal underlying human nature". Jean Claude Gautrand describes humanist photography as: a lyrical trend, warm, fervent, and responsive to the sufferings of humanity [which] began to assert itself during the 1950s in Europe, particularly in France ... photographers dreamed of a world of mutual succour and compassion, encapsulated ideally in a solicitous vision. Photographing on

4510-571: The idea of escaping and finding adventure on the Côte d'Ivoire in French colonial Africa. He survived by shooting game and selling it to local villagers. From hunting, he learned methods which he later used in photography. On the Côte d'Ivoire, he contracted blackwater fever , which nearly killed him. While still feverish, he sent instructions to his grandfather for his own funeral, asking to be buried in Normandy, at

4592-615: The king. His photo credit read "Cartier", as he was hesitant to use his full family name. Between 1937 and 1939, Cartier-Bresson worked as a photographer for the French Communists' evening paper, Ce soir . With Chim and Capa, Cartier-Bresson was a leftist, but he did not join the French Communist party. In 1937, Cartier-Bresson married a Javanese dancer, Ratna Mohini . They lived in a fourth-floor servants' flat in Paris at 19, rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs (now rue Danielle Casanova),

4674-778: The last stage of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. He covered the last six months of the Kuomintang administration and the first six months of the Maoist People's Republic . He also photographed the last surviving Imperial eunuchs in Beijing, as the city was being liberated by the communists. In Shanghai, he often worked in the company of photojournalist Sam Tata , whom Cartier-Bresson had previously befriended in Bombay. From China, he went on to Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), where he documented

4756-400: The late 1960s and early 70s, also in the United States when America came to dominate the medium, with photography in academic artistic and art history programs becoming institutionalised in such programs as the Visual Studies Workshop , after which attention turned to photography as a fine art and documentary image-making was interrogated and transformed in Postmodernism . The list below

4838-537: The museum, which can be very different in character: either the work of relatively young photographers, or a specific project, work that is currently relevant, small retrospectives or the presentation of new developments within the medium. Emphasis is generally on documentary photography , street photography , portrait and glamour photography , and young and upcoming talents. Documentary photography exhibitions at Foam have included Avenue Patrice Lumumba by Guy Tillim , The Hyena & Other Men by Pieter Hugo , In

4920-404: The name Museum Fodor . Between 1863 and 1994, Museum Fodor was open to the public. Between 1994 and 2001 the Nederlands Vormgevingsinstituut was located in these buildings. Foam received permission in November 2001 from the city council for the start-up. On 13 December 2001, Foam opened its first exhibition Dutch Delight . More than 7000 people visited the exhibition in which Dutch light played

5002-405: The period between the two world wars thanks to the Illustrated Press ( Vu and Regards ). Having been brought to notice by the Surrealists and Berenice Abbott, the life work of Eugène Atget in the empty streets of Paris also became a reference. At the end of World War II , in 1946, French intellectuals Jean-Paul Sartre and André Malraux embraced humanism; Sartre argued that existentialism

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5084-437: The photograph's combination of description and emotional affect to both inform and move the viewer, who may identify with the subject; their images are appreciated as continuing the pre-war tradition of photo reportage as social or documentary records of human experience. It is praised for expressing humanist values such as empathy , solidarity , sometimes humor, and mutual respect of cameraperson and subject in recognition of

5166-419: The photographer, usually an editorial freelancer , as auteur on a par with other artists. Developments in technology supported these characteristics. The Ermanox with its fast f /1.8 and f /2 lenses (6 cm x 4.5 cm format, 1924) and the 35mm Leica , 1925) camera, miniaturized and portable, had become available by the end of the 1920s, followed by the medium-format Rolleiflex (1929), and

5248-405: The rigorous theoretical training later helped him identify and resolve problems of artistic form and composition in photography. In the 1920s, schools of photographic realism were popping up throughout Europe but each had a different view on the direction photography should take. The Surrealist movement, founded in 1924, was a catalyst for this paradigm shift . Cartier-Bresson began socializing with

5330-550: The significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression."). Both titles came from Tériade , the Greek-born French publisher whom Cartier-Bresson admired. He gave the book its French title, Images à la Sauvette , loosely translated as "images on the run" or "stolen images." Dick Simon of Simon & Schuster came up with the English title The Decisive Moment . Margot Shore, Magnum's Paris bureau chief, translated Cartier-Bresson's French preface into English. "Photography

5412-529: The small camera gave him in a crowd or during an intimate moment was essential in overcoming the formal and unnatural behavior of those who were aware of being photographed. He enhanced his anonymity by painting all shiny parts of the Leica with black paint. The Leica opened up new possibilities in photography—the ability to capture the world in its actual state of movement and transformation. Restless, he photographed in Berlin , Brussels, Warsaw , Prague, Budapest and Madrid . His photographs were first exhibited at

5494-472: The surf of Lake Tanganyika . Titled Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika , this captured the freedom, grace and spontaneity of their movement and their joy at being alive. That photograph inspired him to stop painting and to take up photography seriously. He explained, "I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant." He acquired the Leica camera with 50 mm lens in Marseilles that would accompany him for many years. The anonymity that

5576-606: The unexposed negative around the image area, resulting in a black frame around the developed picture. Cartier-Bresson worked exclusively in black and white, other than a few experiments in color. He disliked developing or making his own prints and showed a considerable lack of interest in the process of photography in general, likening photography with the small camera to an "instant drawing". Technical aspects of photography were valid for him only where they allowed him to express what he saw: Constant new discoveries in chemistry and optics are widening considerably our field of action. It

5658-426: The usual and unusual...The Surrealists recognized in plain photographic fact an essential quality that had been excluded from prior theories of photographic realism. They saw that ordinary photographs, especially when uprooted from their practical functions, contain a wealth of unintended, unpredictable meanings. Cartier-Bresson matured artistically in this stormy cultural and political atmosphere. But, although he knew

5740-434: The values of dignity, equality and tolerance symbolised in an international proclamation and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the General Assembly of the United Nations in Paris on 10 December 1948. That the photographic image could become a universal language in accord with these principles was a notion circulated at a UNESCO conference in 1958 As France in particular, but also Belgium and

5822-424: Was a French artist and humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography , and an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography , and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment. Cartier-Bresson was one of the founding members of Magnum Photos in 1947. In the 1970s, he largely discontinued his photographic work, instead opting to paint. Henri Cartier-Bresson

5904-472: Was a crossroad of modernist culture and so cosmopolitan influences abound in humanist photography, recruiting emigrés who impressed their stamp on French photography, the earliest being Hungarian André Kertész who arrived on the scene in the mid-1920s; followed by his compatriots Ergy Landau , Brassai (Gyula Halasz), and Robert Capa (Endre Friedmann), and by the Pole "Chim" Seymour ( Dawid Szymin ), among others, in

5986-451: Was a humanism entailing freedom of choice and a responsibility for defining oneself, while at the Sorbonne in an address sponsored by UNESCO , Malraux depicted human culture as 'humanisme tragique', a battle against biological decay and historical disaster. Emerging from brutal global conflict, survivors desired material and cultural reconstruction and the appeal of humanism was a return to

6068-399: Was a humanist. When I lost him in the war, it changed me. He was in his forties, and I changed. I championed the cause of the common man, for people who were not as well off as myself” The movement is in marked contrast to the contemporaneous ‘art’ photography of the USA, which was a country less directly exposed to the trauma that inspired the humanist philosophy. Nevertheless, there too ran

6150-399: Was accelerated through exhibitions and of particular importance in this regard is The Family of Man , a vast travelling exhibition curated by Edward Steichen for MoMA , which presented a unifying humanist manifesto in the form of images selected from amongst, literally, a million. Thirty-one French photographs appeared in The Family of Man , a contribution representing almost one-third of

6232-457: Was also close friends with brothers Alberto Giacometti and Diego Giacometti in Paris. In 1967, he was divorced from his first wife of 30 years, Ratna (known as "Elie"). In 1968, he began to turn away from photography and return to his passion for drawing and painting. He admitted that perhaps he had said all he could through photography. He married Magnum photographer Martine Franck , thirty years younger than himself, in 1970. The couple had

6314-714: Was born in Chanteloup-en-Brie , Seine-et-Marne, France. His father was a wealthy textile manufacturer, whose Cartier-Bresson thread was a staple of French sewing kits. His mother's family were cotton merchants and landowners from Normandy , where Henri spent part of his childhood. His mother was descended from Charlotte Corday . The Cartier-Bresson family lived in a bourgeois neighborhood in Paris, Rue de Lisbonne, near Place de l'Europe and Parc Monceau . Since his parents were providing financial support, Henri pursued photography more freely than his contemporaries. Henri also sketched. Young Henri took holiday snapshots with

6396-511: Was difficult to pronounce. Szymin later changed his name to David Seymour . The two had much in common culturally. Through Chim, Cartier-Bresson met a Hungarian photographer named Endré Friedmann, who later changed his name to Robert Capa . Cartier-Bresson traveled to the United States in 1935 with an invitation to exhibit his work at New York's Julien Levy Gallery. He shared display space with fellow photographers Walker Evans and Manuel Álvarez Bravo. Carmel Snow of Harper's Bazaar gave him

6478-622: Was just 5 years old, taking an apprenticeship in his uncle Louis' studio. After trying to learn music , Cartier-Bresson was introduced to oil painting by his uncle Louis, a gifted painter and winner of the Prix de Rome in 1910. But his painting lessons were cut short when uncle Louis was killed in World War I. In 1927, Cartier-Bresson entered a private art school and the Lhote Academy, the Parisian studio of

6560-624: Was that he was embarrassed by the notion of being photographed for being famous. Cartier-Bresson believed that what went on beneath the surface was nobody's business but his own. He did recall that he once confided his innermost secrets to a Paris taxi driver, certain that he would never meet the man again. In 2003, he created the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in Paris with his wife, the Belgian photographer Martine Franck and his daughter to preserve and share his legacy. In 2018,

6642-467: Was to "feel the pulse" of the times and some of its first projects were People Live Everywhere , Youth of the World , Women of the World and The Child Generation . Magnum aimed to use photography in the service of humanity, and provided arresting, widely viewed images. In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book Images à la sauvette, whose English-language edition was titled The Decisive Moment, although

6724-699: Was toting Joyce under my arm and a Lebel rifle on my shoulder." In 1929, Cartier-Bresson's air squadron commandant placed him under house arrest for hunting without a licence. Cartier-Bresson met American expatriate Harry Crosby at Le Bourget , who persuaded the commandant to release Cartier-Bresson into his custody for a few days. The two men both had an interest in photography, and Harry presented Henri with his first camera. They spent their time together taking and printing pictures at Crosby's home, Le Moulin du Soleil (The Sun Mill), near Paris in Ermenonville , France. Crosby later said Cartier-Bresson "looked like

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