Posters in the midground reiterate the leaping figure
and his reflection in the water; the man has pro-
pelled himself off a ladder-like structure that mimics
railway track, and so on. Cartier-Bresson was sel-
dom accused of the ‘‘lucky shot’’ culled from
numerous exposures, however, for he was famous
for shooting judiciously, often exposing only a few
frames during events, when other photojournalists
would shoot many rolls.
Henri Cartier-Bresson was born in Chanteloup,
Seine-et-Marne, on August 22, 1908, the oldest of
five children. His father was a textile manufacturer
of considerable wealth, yet the household was run
as would be one of modest means to the point that
as a boy Cartier-Bresson had little idea of the
family’s resources, which included extensive land
holdings in Normandy where he would summer.
He was educated in Paris at the Lyce ́e Condorcet,
where he read avidly, but received no formal
photographic training. His introduction to the
medium as a potential career was through seeing
photographs by Martin Munkacsi as a teenager,
which impressed him with their beauty and possi-
bility. He did, however, study painting in 1927–28
under Andre ́Lhote, who had been an early practi-
tioner of Cubism; it was Lhote who Cartier-Bres-
son claimed taught him everything he knew about
photography through his training to observe clo-
sely and imaginatively and learn from art history.
He was also deeply impressed by the works of the
Surrealist artists who were then beginning to dom-
inate the Parisian art world. He studied English
literature and art at Cambridge University in Lon-
don until his induction into the French Army in
- Upon his discharge, filled with the poetry
and literature and looking for adventure, he was
off to the French colony of Coˆte d’Ivoire to hunt.
It was here he first took photographs using a
Brownie that he had been given as a gift, and the
pursuit of shooting game as a metaphor for shoot-
ing photographs, which he often used in his writ-
ing and speaking about the medium, also arose.
He contracted blackwater fever, however, and al-
most died. The photographs he took were also
lost. Returning to Marseilles to recuperate, he
acquired his first professional camera, a Leica,
which he used to photograph in earnest when he
had occasion to travel the continent with friends.
His first exhibition was in Madrid; however, by
1935 he was in New York, where he exhibited at
the Julien Levy Gallery. While in New York, he
met Paul Strand, who at that time was making
films. Inspired by Strand, when he returned to
France Cartier-Bresson secured the position of a
second assistant on Jean Renoir’sA Day in the
CountryandThe Rules of the Game.He was also
involved in a propaganda film the famous director
made for the French Communist Party that
denounced France’s prominent families in France,
Cartier-Bresson’s own among them. Cartier-Bres-
son did not join the Communist Party, but he
harbored a life-long sympathy for oppressed and
demoralized lower classes, which was often ref-
lected in his choice of subject matter.
In 1940, with the German invasion of France,
Cartier-Bresson, a corporal in the Army’s Film and
Photo Unit, was captured. He spent a total of
almost three years in prisoner-of-war camps, escap-
ing twice and being recaptured and returned to
hard labor, which he later claimed had been a help-
ful lesson. On his third escape attempt, in 1943, he
succeeded, and he hid on a farm in Touraine until
he secured false papers that allowed him to travel in
France, where he once again took up photograph-
ing as a member of the Resistance. He established a
photo division within the French underground to
document the German occupation as well as their
eventual retreat, an experience which surely shaped
his ideas about the photo agency, Magnum, when
it was established in 1947, and photographed such
notables as artists Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso,
and Georges Braque. Following France’s liberation
in 1944, the United States Office of War Informa-
tion hired Cartier-Bresson to direct a film about the
homecoming of French prisoners and deportees.
Upon completing this well-received film, The
Return, Cartier-Bresson traveled once again to
New York City, where a retrospective at the Mu-
seum of Modern Art, conceived as a tribute on the
belief that he had been killed in the war, had been
planned. He was thus able to work on his own
‘‘posthumous’’ exhibition, and he took time as well
to travel around the United States, taking such sig-
nature images as Harlem, Easter Sunday, 1947,
which shows a lovely African American woman
wearing a satin-flower filled hat framed within the
architectural details of a modest brick structure,
which join with the forms of the hat to create an
even more elaborate chapeaux.
Returning to Paris in 1947, he learned that his
associates Robert Capa, David Seymour (Chim),
William Vandivert, and George Rodger, had laid
plans for a cooperative photo agency with offices in
New York, Paris, and other world capitals. Dubbed
Magnum Photos, the organizing group named Car-
tier-Bresson to their board of directors, knowing
that he was like minded and aware of his consider-
able prestige. He was tapped to be in charge of FarCARTIER-BRESSON, HENRI