Welcome to Pho·tog Friday!
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| Inge, Morath, Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1970. |
As stated in Part IV of this special "Pho·tog Series" on Henri Cartier-Bresson, towards the end of the 1960s, he started to become less involved in photography and drifted more towards the medium that he had initially fallen in love with: painting. Cartier-Bresson admitted that he felt as though he had done all he could with photography.
In 1970, Cartier-Bresson married a woman named Martine Franck, who was also a well-known Belgian documentary photographer. The two had met in 1966 while photographing a Paris Fashion Show for the New York Times. Apparently, Cartier-Bresson's "pick up line" was "Martine, I want to come and see your contact sheets". In 1972, Franck and Cartier-Bresson had a daughter named Mélanie. (Fantastic name, I might add.) Just as ambitious as Cartier-Bresson, Frank worked as a freelance photographer for multiple publications, two photo agencies and would eventually also become a member of the Magnum Photo Agency, started by her husband in 1947.
In an interview taken in 1973, Cartier Bresson gave a lecture at The Photographer's Gallery and explained his thoughts behind his photographic career. Within the lecture, he also explained why he felt as though he should continue within his paintings:
“I’ve been taking pictures when I was very young. I think I don’t remember what age. I started by painting and drawing and for me photography was a mean of drawing and that’s all. Immediate sketch done with intuition and you can’t correct it. If you have to correct it it’s your next picture. But life is very fluid. Well sometimes the pictures disappeared and there is nothing you can do. You can’t tell the person, oh, please smile again do that gesture again. Life is once, forever.
I’m not interested in documenting. Documenting is extremely dull and journalism… I’m a very bad reporter and a photojournalist. Capa told me when I had an exhibition at the museum of Modern Art in ’46, he said no, he’d be very careful. You mustn’t have a label of a surrealist photographer. All my training was surrealism. I still feel very close to a surrealist but he said if you were labelled as a surrealist photographer, you won’t go any further, you won’t have an assignment, and you’re going to be like a hot house plant. Just forget it, do whatever you like but the label should be photojournalist. And Capa was extremely sound so I never mentioned surrealism, that’s my private affair. And what I want, what I’m looking for is my business. And I’m not a reporter. It's accidentally, it’s on the side. If I go to a place, it's to try and have a picture which concretises a situation of wonder, glances, everything and which has a strong relations of shapes, which for me is essential; for me its a visual pleasure".
Despite Cartier-Bresson's decision to pull away from photography, he still traveled throughout the world and took photographs. The same year, he traveled back to Russia. "After nineteen years since the first trip, I longed to go back to Russia. There is nothing more revealing than comparing a country with itself by grasping its differences and trying to discover the thread of its continuity":
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| Cartier-Bresson, Henri, Leningrad, Russia, Building New Housing on Vassilievsky Island, 1973. |
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| Cartier-Bresson, Henri, Pskov, Russia, Petchora Monastery (XVth Century), 1973. |
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| Cartier-Bresson, Henri, Leningrad, Russia, Portrait of Lenin Decorates a Facade of the Winter Palace for May Day Celebration 1973. |
Seemingly, in 1974, Cartier-Bresson started to slow down his photography work and concentrated not only on his drawings but also on spending time with his family. Pictured below is a portrait of Cartier-Bresson and his daughter taken by his wife:
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| Franck, Martine, Henri Cartier-Bresson with Daughter Mélanie, 1974. |
In 1975, Oxford University awarded Cartier-Bresson with an honorary degree. The same year, he traveled throughout Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States of America and took portraits of those he came into contact with:
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| Cartier-Bresson, Henri, Iannis Xenakis, French Composer, 1975. |
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| Cartier-Bresson, Henri, Birsana, Romania, Sunday Morning, 1975. |
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| Cartier-Bresson, Henri, Leesburg, New Jersey, USA, Solitary Confinement, 1975. |
Cartier-Bresson spent a lot of time in France in 1976. A lot of time was spent drawing:
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| Franck, Martine, Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1976. |
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| Franck, Martine, Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Alpes de Haute-Provence, France, 1976. |
Cartier-Bresson and his wife did travel through Switzerland... and he did take a couple of photos throughout France during 1976:
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| Franck, Martine, Henri Cartier-Bresson on the Train to Montreux, Switzerland, 1976. |
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| Cartier-Bresson, Henri, Pas de Calais, 1976. |
Throughout the span of his life, Cartier-Bresson traveled around the world and took some of the most amazing photographs known to man - in my humble opinion. Throughout his time as a photojournalist, he covered some of the major upheavals of the 20th Century: The Spanish Civil War, The Liberation of Paris in 1944, 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. Along with photographing social events, Cartier-Bresson was also known for the portraits that he took of some of the worlds most famous artists: Camus, Picasso, Colette, Matisse, Pound and Giacometti.
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| Cartier-Bresson, Henri, Bram Van Velde, Dutch Painter at Home, 1977. |
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| Cartier-Bresson, Henri, Sam Szafran, French Painter, 1978. |
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| Cartier-Bresson, Henri, Hortense Cartier-Bresson, French Pianist, 1979. |
I find it intriguing that for the last thirty years of his life, he continued taking photographs but also participated in a "slower" medium. In other words, Cartier-Bresson is best known for his "Descisive Moment" although with painting and drawing, a work of art does not happen in a flash. In fact, he described drawing as a "meditation". Perhaps taking a successful photograph does not happen in a flash either; there in lies the connection.
Thus concludes the special "Pho·tog Friday" five part series on Cartier-Bresson's life of photography. To read more about Cartier-Bresson's life and death in 2004, please check out the Henri Cartier-Bresson's Foundation: click here. To see an amazing interview with Cartier-Bresson, check out the video below:
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01. "Henri Cartier-Bresson." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 17 Sept. 2013. Web. 19 Sept. 2013.
02. "Henri Cartier-Bresson." Magnum Photos. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2013.
03. "Bresson Interview." YouTube. YouTube, 09 Dec. 2011. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.
04. "Henri Cartier-Bresson Speaking at The Photographers' Gallery, 1973." SoundCloud. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.
04. "Henri Cartier-Bresson Speaking at The Photographers' Gallery, 1973." SoundCloud. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2013.