Henri Cartier-Bresson

Exhibition Catalogue Henri Cartier-Bresson, presented at Fonds Hélène & Edouard Leclerc pour la culture, Landerneau (15 june 2024 - 5 jan. 2025).

More than 300 photographs are reproduced through a chronological and thematic path, highlighting the diversity of the approach of the photographer of the twentieth century.

There is not one but several Henri Cartier-Bresson. The young man influenced by surrealism who travelled to Spain, Italy and Mexico in the first half of the 1930s was not the same one at the end of that decade, when he became politically engaged with the communists to try stemming the rise of fascism in Europe. After the Second World War, it was still another facet that showed when he founded the Magnum Photos agency and travelled to take photographs around the world.

Through the history of that multi-faceted eye, this comprehensive retrospective also outlines the history of the 20th century.

Cartier-Bresson refused to let himself be photographed or filmed. He didn’t want to be recognised in the streets, because he wished to continue to work in a quiet manner. But after his exhibition at MoMA in New York in 1947, he unwillingly became one of the most admired photographers of his time, a true living legend. Several among the professionals and amaterus who occasionally met him, took pictures of him, most often against his wish. Therefore, a vast quantity of portraits of Cartier-Bresson at work exists.

Comprising 300 works among the most famous but also some novelties, this retrospective is built around those chance photographs of the artist. They provide the rhythm of the 23 sections of the exhibition, placing Cartier-Bresson in his time, at a precise moment in his career.