Bio:
Henri Cartier Bresson was born in France and was the eldest of the 5 children in his family. His family was part of the middle class of European feudalism. His family was well-educated and hard workers. His dad was a successful textile manufacturer and his mom and her family was in the cotton business and owned land in Normandy. He spent the beginning of his childhood in Normandy. His family was very supportive of his artistic skills and before photography he liked to sketch a lot. His father assumed that his son would take up the family business, but Bresson was determined and followed in passion for the arts. Bresson studied in Paris at the École Fénelon, which was a prestigious Catholic school.
After unsuccessful attempts to learn music, his uncle Louis, a famous painter, introduced Bresson to oil painting. He died in World War I soon after he introduced Bresson to the magic of paint. He was very close to his uncle and was devastated when he passed away. In 1927, when Bresson was 19, he entered a private art school at the Lhote Academy. It brought him to the Louvre where he studied classic art and modern art. He liked the variety of both subjects. Bresson often regarded Lhote as his teacher of photography without a camera. He was also very inspired by the Renaissance period.
Although he enjoyed painting, he found himself always frustrated and unhappy with his work. He ended up destroying most of his masterpieces. Bresson was very creativity frustrated and had enough of painting. From 1928 to 1929, Bresson attended the University of Cambridge studying English art and literature and became bilingual. In 1930, he did his mandatory service in the French Army stationed at Le Bourget, near Paris. He moved to Marseille, France when he came back a year later in 1931. He became inspired by a 1930 photograph by Hungarian photojournalist Martin Munkacsi, showing three naked young African boys that was titled Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika, this captured the free will in people and expression of people being full of life. That photograph inspired him to stop painting and to take up photography seriously. He bought a Leica camera and described it as an extension of his eye. He roamed the streets with his camera all day and night waiting for the exact movement and grace of a person or object that struck him. In half a second he could capture a great genuine moment that shows people more than first impressions and their true being. He photographed inBerlin, Brussels, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Madrid. His photographs were first exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1932, and at the Ateneo Club in Madrid. In 1934 in Mexico, he shared an exhibition with Manuel Alvarez Bravo.
In the beginning, Bresson’s inspirtaion was not from his birthplace France. It became years before he started to photogrpah France religously. In 1934 Cartier-Bresson met a young Polish photographer named David Szymin. The two had much in common culturally. Through Szymin, Bresson met a Hungarian photographer named Endre Friedmann. The three shared a studio in the early 1930s and Friedmann advised Bresson intensely. Bresson traveled to the United States in 1935 with an invitation to exhibit his work at New York's Julien Levy Gallery. Furthermore, Snow was the first American editor to publish Bresson's photographs in a magazine. When he returned to France, Bresson applied for a job with the French film director Jean Renoir. He acted in Renoir's 1936 film Partie de campagne and in the 1939 La Règle du jeu. Renoir made Bresson act so he could understand how it felt to be on the other side of the camera. 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.
In 1937 Bresson married a Japanese dancer, Ratna Mohina. Between 1937 and 1939 Bresson worked as a photographer for the French Communists' evening paper, Ce Soir. He joined the French Army as a Corporal in the Film and Photo unit when World War II broke out in September 1939. During the Battle of France, in June 1940 at St. Dié in the Vosges Mountains, he was captured by German soldiers and spent 35 months in prisoner-of-war camps doing forced labor under the Nazis. In 1947, when the war ended and Bresson found his old camera, he was asked by the American Office of War Information to make a documentary, Le Retour about returning French prisoners. His first photography book was published and displayed at the Moma. In spring 1947, Cartier-Bresson, with Robert Capa, David Seymour, and George Rodger founded Magnum Photos, which are an international photographic cooperative located in New York, Paris, London and Tokyo. Bresson held Gandhi's funeral in India in 1948 and the last phase of the Chinese Civil War, where he inquired international praise. 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. From China, he went on to Indonesia. There he documented the gaining of independence from the Dutch.
Bresson held his first exhibition in France at the Pavilion de Marsan in the Louvre in 1955.In 1952;Bresson published his book, The Decisive Moment. It included a portfolio of 126 of his photos from the East and the West. Bresson's photography took him to many places in the world, which included China, Mexico, Canada, and the United States, India, Japan, Soviet Union and etc. In 1968, he began to turn away from photography and return to his passion for drawing and painting in 1967, he divorced his first wife and he married photographer Martine Franck, three years later. The couple had a daughter, Mélanie, in May 1972. Bresson died in Montjustin of old age and was also buried there. Bresson’s wife and daughter created the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation in 2003 to remember his legacy. In the words of Bresson, " "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.” Bresson was a grand man with many accomplishments and will remain an international superstar.
Photograph Background:
He started off with a Box Brownie as a young child, using it for taking holiday photos. He later experimented with a three by four view camera. However, he was also fascinated by painting and studied for two years in a Paris studio. This early training in art helped develop the magical eye for composition, which was one of his best gifts as a photographer. It wasn’t until he lived in Marseille that he really discovered photography. He retrieved a Leica and began taking photos. His imagination was in power and he saw a whole new world that he had never experienced before. He says in his elder ages "prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to ‘trap’ life, to preserve life in the act of living." He stayed devoted to the Leica for his whole life. Before long he was handling its controls like a pro. One of his most famous phrases about his beloved camera, became an "extension of the eye". Bresson helped create the Magnum picture agency in 1947. These major magazines took him on throughout the world, across Europe and the United States, to India, Russia and China. Many books of Bresson photographs were published in the 50’s and 60’s, the most famous being, The Decisive Moment in 1952. His small camera was amateur, but Bresson was the complete opposite, being known as one of the best and photographers ever lived in France and the only to have his works in the Louvre.
Style:
He made a 35 mm camera famous and used the essence of reality beautiful. He roamed the streets to find inspiration and the exact moment to capture an image. He was a street photographer and was known as the father of candid photos. His style was real and he never had models of people to pose for him. He believed in seizing the best moment and the camera was “ an extension of the eye.” He loved to see the happiness and life in people. All of his photos capture a feeling and all of his photos were a chance. He took a chance on every one of hi photos and they all turned out magnificent.
Major projects:
These are some of Bresson’s most famous pieces of photography that are known all over the world. His main inspiration was walking through the streets of France. He showed Paris in a new light.
http://aesthetica.blox.pl/resource/bresson_behind.jpg
http://www.hackelbury.co.uk/images/artists/franck/childresnlib_bg.JPG
http://photohistory.jeffcurto.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/cartier-bresson-hyeres.jpg
http://www.electricedge.com/greymatter/images4/bresson11.jpg
As you can see all of his photos were in back and white and captured people in natural moments. All of these pictures were taken in France except the one with the three children. The las one was taken in Africa and stood out because it was one of his first pictures ever taken and reflects everything he desires in a photo and life. This picture was his first monument of photography. His most famous picture was probably the one of the man jumping over the water which is says was chance and he was lucky to have been there at that moment. He loved the texture of the background and the way lines lined up. People were fascinating to him and the world was his palette.
Photography Research #2
Bresson’s Photography Background Genre:
Bresson’s style of photography is street photography. One of the most candid styles of photography is the street photography. It has candid pictures that are captured when people are among everyday situations. Street photography began from pictures captured anywhere on the street and has now moved everywhere. Street photographers will never ask anyone to pose or to act as if he or she knows what might happen next. Nothing is staged and everything is spontaneous. This gives art the unknown and everything that street photograph means.
Main artist in street photography:
I would say the main artist was actually Bresson. He was considered the acknowledged king of candid photography. Also, he was considered to be the father of photojournalism. Cartier-Bresson developed the photojournalistic street photography, this technique influenced other photographers of that time and still today!
William Klein: Born in new York 1938, and moved to France where he took model shots and street photography in motion. He made many movies, one including about Muhammad Ali( a famous wrestler) and won the Prix Nadar in 1956. He took images of of people in motion in a series and it ended with the last photo telling the end and the final event. He went from videos and to photography over the years and will be remembered as photography's bad boy,is one of the formative voices of street photography from the 1950s and '60s. Klein's work has been called chaotic, disorganized,threatening and abrasive, while it is also explosive,evocative and playful. His pictured had a mix of fashion a expression of people in a natural state, much like Bresson.
What Bresson brought to photography:
Bresson was the founding master of photojournalism and brought not only creativity, but a whole new world of art. Before him, photojournalism was not a common type of photography and he brought it into the spot light. He spent 45 years in photography and shows people that they can achieve their dream if they try. He knew that photography was his talent in life, even though he preferred drawing. He described photography as” an instant drawing.” He was the first photographer to have an exhibit in the Louvre, Paris. Also, his works were all over the world and is an international renowned artist. He showed people that not everything had to be posed and over thought. The more natural the better. You can just walk outside your house with a camera and take a masterpiece of work if you knew the essence of the photo. He seemed to be in the right place at the right time and it was always up to chance. If you are not looking for beauty then you won’t find it, but if your eyes are open and willing you can take wonderful pieces. He brought a new sense of photography and made street photography big!
Elements of Bresson's photography techniques:
angles( high to low) (low to high)
black and white
shadows
people in action
shows relationship with people
perspective/depth ( close to far away)
people are always in his picture
humor
people jumping
shadows of their faces
children
motion pictures
people always seem to align well in his pictures
mostly outside
Bresson says," To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It's at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy." I tried to capture this technique and kept my eyes open and searched for the exact moment to..."click." His works look easier than they are because it is hard to capture a perfect natural picture that doesn't looked posed, but yet still interesting. he had a true gift at doing this. My favorite pictures of these are the first 2 because I think the first one is simple and interesting at the same time and looks like something you would see in his gallery. The second one I like because I captured the lady's emotions well at the exact moment she turned her head. A lot of these pictures are motion shots because Bresson liked them and because I was driving in a car when they were taken. Most of them were taken also when it was raining which shows the change in peoples' emotions and adds more effect to the image and background. They are all in black an white and all contain people in action(on-the-go)
