Henri Cartier-Bresson: A Tribute
Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photo by Ihei Kimura.
Henri Cartier-Bresson died in Provence, France, 3 August 2004, a few days before his 96th birthday.
Twenty years on, what is his legacy?
Annie Leibovitz, another world famous photographer, sums it up best. ‘Seeing Cartier-Bresson’s work made me want to become a photographer’. Some accolade.
Was she lucky enough to meet her idol? Yes. It didn’t go well. Because he refused to let her photograph him she snapped him secretly. He was furious. Why? Shy? No. Modest? No. Modest people do not inaugurate and bankroll their own Foundation. He valued his privacy? Yes.
He wouldn’t be able to work on the street if people knew what he looked like. They would behave differently.
This is why he covered the shiny metal parts of his camera with black tape. This is why he never used flash. He thought it extremely rude.
He often quoted Degas who said ‘It's wonderful to be famous as long as you remain unknown’.
This is why when you hear his name you can’t immediately picture him in your mind. There are not many photographs of him when he worked as a street photographer.
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 America, he travelled under an alias, Hank Carter.
He was extremely uncomfortable if the reason people wanted to photograph him was because he was famous. He equated that with being a celebrity. I am not an actor, he said, I am an artisan.
He disliked developing or making his own prints.
He disliked the term art when applied to his photographs. He said they were merely his gut reactions.
When he saw a situation he liked, he stayed there and waited for something to happen. At the peak of the student protests in Paris in May 1968, during the turmoil, calm under pressure, M. Cartier-Bresson took photographs at the rate of four an hour.
Unlike the equally famous Robert Doisneau who made up his images, Cartier Bresson captured his.
M. Doisneau made no apologies for staging his shots, saying, ‘I don't photograph life as it is, but life as I would like it to be’.
Le Pin Perdu: Max Ernst’s House in Huismes, France. Photo by Mark Playle.
M. Cartier-Bresson often visited the Loire Valley to visit Le Pin Perdu the home of surrealist painters Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning.
Le Pin Perdu in Huismes was a meeting place for giants in their field who became household names. Photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lee Miller, Man Ray, artists such as Jean Arp and Marcel Duchamp, he of a rather more famous Fountain (a urinal) than that of Max’s in Amboise.
The friends often went shopping for wine in nearby Chinon where The Maid of Orleans told Charles VII to get his act together and get rid of the English. M. Cartier Bresson took a photo of Max in Chinon with the Joan of Arc statue.
He once remarked that although it is necessary to master a camera’s technology, it’s only a tool to help you express yourself. There must be a relationship between the eye and the heart.
Post by Pamela (BA History of Art).
