Masters of Photography - Henri Cartier-Bresson (2/2)

Photojournalism.Photography © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos http://www.henricartierbresson... http://www.magnumphotos.com/Ar... Cartier-Bresson (1908 --2004) was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism.Cartier-Bresson's first photojournalist photos to be published came in 1937 when he covered the coronation of King George VI, for the French weekly Regards. He focused on the new monarch's adoring subjects lining the London streets, and took no pictures of the king. In spring 1947, Cartier-Bresson, with Robert Capa, David "Chim" Seymour, William "Bill" Vandivert, and George Rodger founded Magnum Photos Magnum's mission was to "feel the pulse" of the times. Magnum aimed to use photography in the service of humanity, and provided arresting, widely viewed images.Cartier-Bresson achieved international recognition for his coverage of Gandhi's funeral in India in 1948 and the last (1949) stage of the Chinese Civil War. 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 falling to the communists. From China, he went on to Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), where he documented the gaining of independence from the Dutch."Il n'y a rien dans ce monde qui n'ait un moment decisif" ("There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment"). Cartier-Bresson applied this to his photographic style. "Photography 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."Cartier-Bresson's photography took him many places on the globe -- China, Mexico, Canada, the United States, India, Japan, Soviet Union and many other countries. He became the first Western photographer to photograph "freely" in the post-war Soviet Union. In 1968, he began to turn away from photography and return to his passion for drawing and painting. Cartier-Bresson withdrew as a principal of Magnum (which still distributed his photographs) in 1966 to concentrate on portraiture and landscapes. Cartier-Bresson spent more than three decades on assignment for Life and other journals. He travelled without bounds, documenting some of the great upheavals of the 20th century — the Spanish civil war, the liberation of Paris in 1945, the 1968 student rebellion in Paris, the fall of the Kuomintang in China to the communists, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the Berlin Wall, and the deserts of Egypt. And along the way he paused to document portraits of Sartre, Picasso, Colette, Matisse, Pound and Giacometti-------------------- --------------------

Channel: Education
Uploaded: December 31, 1969 at 6:59 pm
Author: Cybelephotography

Length: 02:41
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Tags: B&W  Cartier-Bresson  France  Henri  photograph  photojournalism  

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