The Eye of the Century - HCB

bressoninbrie
Originally uploaded by pixant

Yesterday we went to the longingly anticipated exhibition „Tête à tête“, of Henri Cartier-Bresson's work in Muenster, Germany.

It was marvellous!

Bresson (1908 – 2004), French photographer and the father of photojournalism is best known for his images of 20th-century artists, authors, scientists, actors, and events. Strongly influenced by surrealism he wanted to capture the „decisive moment“. His photos, mostly taken with a Leica are uncropped and unmanipulated. As he could reach very old age (96) he covered a huge span of events – the first photos date back to the Warsaw ghetto, the Spanish Civil War, the partition of India, especially the funeral of Ghandhi, the Chinese revolution, the student rebellion in France 1968.

In 1947, together with Robert Capa, David Seymour, William Vandivert and others he became a co-founder of Magnum, an international photographic cooperative owned by its photographer members. They saw Magnum as a "community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually."

Quotes:
"To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It's a way of life."
"The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression... . In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif."


My favourites in the exhibit: the portrait of Arthur Miller, sitting at his desk and the portrait of Truman Capote, sitting between huge exotic leaves, taken in 1947.

Here are some of the photos of Tête à tête.

My favorites in general:
Natchez, Mississippi, 1947
Aquila degli Abruzzi, Italy 1951,
Ile de Cité, Paris 1951
Rome, 1959
Palais Royal, Paris 1959
Marilyn Monroe in Reno, 1961

Here's another collection.

It's actually not easy to locate all the photos in the web, therefore I've put as many links as possible.

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