Henri Cartier-Bresson

by Pierre Assouline

"The twentieth century was that of the image, and the legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, born in 1908, was the eye of the century. His life story and the interpretation of his work reveal first and foremost the history of a vision." "As he traversed the century, his eclectic eye focused on the fascination of Africa in the 1920s, the tragic fate of the Spanish Republicans, the Liberation of Paris, the weariness of Gandhi a few hours before his assassination, and the victory of the Chinese communists. Cartier-Bresson was always on the spot, the great opportunist, seizing life's historic events as they happened." "He was also assistant to Jean Renoir on three major films. He was an artist who wanted to be an artisan, and he was one of the founders of Magnum, the most famous of all photographers' agencies. It was he who fixed forever in our minds the features of famous contemporaries: Mauriac mysteriously levitating, Giacometti and Sartre as characters from their own works, Faul