1908-2004

Henri Cartier-Bresson, the son of a wealthy textile manufacturer, studied in Paris with the cubist painter André Lhote, gaining an appreciation for surrealism and juxtaposition.  “Photographic works are the simultaneous recognition of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give its proper expression.”  Cartier-Bresson traveled widely, recording the lives of ordinary people, with an instinct for the “decisive moment” that arrested time in fleeting images.  In 1936, Cartier-Bresson collaborated with the French film director Jean Renoir, honing his sense of the dramatic.  He joined the French Resistance, documenting the German occupation and its retreat.  Together with Robert Capa and others, Cartier-Bresson founded Magnum Photos, an international photographic cooperative owned by its photographer-members.