A
Anonymous
Guest
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TRAVEL/DESTINAT ... index.html
Retrospective of Cartier-Bresson opens in Paris
Museum diplays images from artist's 50 years of global travel
PARIS, France (AP) --"My passion was never for photography per se," says the man who is often called the world's greatest living photographer.
The first love of Henri Cartier-Bresson was painting. Now, at the age of 94, the godfather of photojournalism has put down his Leica for brushes and pencils.
"Photography is an instant action. Drawing is meditation," he says in a handwritten message placed beside both his mediums at a major retrospective of his work and life.
"Henri Cartier-Bresson: Who is He?" will be on view at the Bibliotheque Nationale through July 27. It is being billed as the most complete retrospective ever exhibited of the man who traveled the world capturing some of the 20th century's most memorable images.
In 50 years of crisscrossing the globe, Cartier-Bresson became known for seemingly simple shots of life: a family picnicking on the sloped banks of the Marne river; a blurred bicyclist speeding beneath a spiral staircase.
One of his skills was the ability to be in the right place at the right time. He met with Gandhi a half-hour before his assassination; he documented Indonesia at its independence and China during the fall of Chiang Kai-shek and the rise of Mao -- always bringing the sensitive eye of a trained artist to photojournalism.
He shot for Life, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and, in 1947, helped found the legendary Magnum photo agency. His work inspired generations of photographers.
"He represents the archetype," said Robert Delpire, who curated the Paris show. "He had a sense of politics and art, he had an incomparable eye, speed and sense of harmony. There is no photographer in the world who could match the quality and consistency of what is on exhibit here."
Photography foundation
Across town from the exhibit, the new Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation opens its doors this month in Montparnasse. And, in conjunction with the retrospective, a 430-page book has been released in French and English, "Henri-Cartier Bresson: The Man, the Image and the World."
After a lifetime of turning his lens on the world and shunning personal celebrity, it all seems a bit much to Cartier-Bresson. He did not attend a private showing for the media when the retrospective opened April 30.
"He feels he shouldn't be honored this way, and that it's all totally unnecessary," said his wife, the photographer Martine Franck, who is vice president of the new foundation.
Cartier-Bresson's extensive archives will be stored at the foundation, which he created to preserve his work and promote promising new talents. It will award $30,000 every other year to a new photography project and rotate regular exhibits through two floors of galleries.
"He's been gracious and accepting, but he's very modest," Franck said. "He never really wanted to become mythic."
Seeing the world
What he wanted was to be an artist and see the world.
At the age of 20, Cartier-Bresson turned his back on a lucrative family textile business and went to study with cubist painter Andre Lhote. It was in the painter's studio, Cartier-Bresson has said, that he learned geometry and developed an eye for lines and form that became the foundation of his photographic style.
A few years later, on a trip to Ivory Coast, he picked up a camera and was smitten with the immediacy of photography.
Some of Cartier-Bresson's early Africa photographs, and others that have never been publicly seen, are among the 350 pieces in the retrospective. Vintage prints are alongside the classics, with separate sections devoted to his drawings, paintings and personal memorabilia -- accompanied by quotations and missives from Cartier-Bresson. The exhibit is scheduled to travel to Barcelona, Berlin and Rome starting this fall.
Among the highlights is "Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare," considered by many critics to be his greatest. It captures a man suspended in mid-leap over a puddle, mirrored perfectly by his reflection.
It illustrates Cartier-Bresson's mastery at capturing the "decisive moment," as his photographic signature became known.
Asked how he did it, Cartier-Bresson recently said the key is not to think too much about it.
"People don't watch enough. They think. It's not the same thing," Cartier-Bresson told French newspaper the Journal du Dimanche. "I don't know anything about printing or technique. And that doesn't interest me. The Louvre museum taught me how to observe. I went there to watch and to copy."
The exhibit also displays Cartier-Bresson's famed celebrity portraits: Truman Capote, Jean-Paul Sartre, an aging Matisse holding a dove in one hand and sketching intensely with the other.
Delpire said his mission as curator was to go beyond a presentation of Cartier-Bresson's best works and to offer insight into the complex, talented man behind the lens.
"You can't characterize Cartier-Bresson in a word," Delpire said. "Like all artists, he's a mystery. And the mysterious part is what's most interesting."
