By Cheryl Anderson
“I, like many another boy, burst into the world of photography with a Box Brownie,”—Henri Cartier-Bresson
Puddle jumping man and a dancer on the billboard in the distance. 1932
There’s something about a black-and-white photo. What is it?
Does the treatment make it seem more artistic? So many moments in history are presented in black-and-white. The point of the story is made clear in black and white. When color is removed from a photo of the “City of Light” it conjures a different emotion, but still its beauty and charm are not lost. It’s been written: “Some may dream in color. I dream in Paris.” Paris is always and forever Paris, no color needed. One can imagine the colors of the flowers in a Paris market…perhaps, a memory may ensue having once been there. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s black and white photos are among the best in capturing the essence of Paris. He felt the words of Thomas Jefferson: “A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of life.”
About Cartier-Bresson, Vera Feyder states: “Obedience has never been his strong point.” He had been encouraged to stay put. As a young boy he always imagined himself going someplace. At a moments notice Cartier-Bresson would venture forth to near or distant lands to capture on film people in decisive moments and not merely the sites people flock. It was that moment he sought to capture. As he put it: “The little human detail can become a leitmotive.” I saw a picture of Cartier-Bresson kneeling in front of printed photos lined up on the floor. I imagined he was looking for the one that captured the decisive moment. Did he catch it? Once saying: “I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant.” Also noted as saying: ”Of course it’s all luck.”
“Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes…We cannot develop and print a memory. The writer has time to reflect.”—Henri Cartier-Bresson
Titled: “rue Mouffetard” Michael Gabriel in the picture, 1952.
Cartier-Bresson left school early as well as the André Lhote academy. Painting and sketching still-life and the masters in Paris were put aside. Between 1928-1929 he attended University of Cambridge studying art, literature and English language…he became fluent. Then in 1930, he was conscripted into the French Army. About that, he is quoted as saying: “And I had quite a hard time of it, too, because I was toting Joyce under my arm and a Lebel rifle on my shoulder.”
In 1931, at the age of twenty two, he went to the Côte d’Ivoire in the French colonial Africa. He was there for one year. He had various jobs before ending up shooting game and selling it to the locals for survival. Contracting black water fever, he almost died…so close to death he sent detailed instructions to his grandfather for his funeral. With his miniature portable camera, made by the French company Krauss, he honed his photography skills. He said the weather in the tropics destroyed all the photos from his adventure…“all my photographs were embellished with the superimposed patterns of giant ferns.”
He recuperated from his illness in Marseille in late 1931. While there he got the, new on the market, Leica 35mm camera…thus taking photography seriously. The Leica, “became the extension of my eye, and I have never been separated from it since I found it. I 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.” His early photos were linked to Surrealism between 1934 to the end of 1934. He didn’t get paid for this work and those photos were often displayed in museums and art galleries…journalistic work is roughly between 1947-1966. Although, he did cover the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth for the French weekly Regards.
“All I care about these days is painting—photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing…Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.”
—Henri Cartier-Bresson
After convalescing, Henri made trips to Spain and Italy and a year’s stay in Mexico. His photographs from Mexico combine the influence of Surrealism and his sympathy for the unfortunate. The beginning of the Second World War found him mobilized into the French Army. His unit was captured in the Voges, June 1940, where they spent three years of forced labor in Germany. Henri escaped three times. He kept escaping since the punishment wasn’t too terrible…three weeks solitary and two months hard labor. Succeeding on his third attempt, he then returned to Paris becoming involved in photojournalism. The advice he gave to his assistant, Inge Morath, was “to look for composition, for visual order, and to let drama takes care of itself.” The photo of the puddle jumper captured the fleeting moment and the drama. And, in the distance a leaping dancer on the billboard.
Life is what interested him and he wanted to capture it. Cartier-Bresson puts it like this: “You see, photography is nothing, it’s life that interests me. Life you see?” Although, he had been away from Paris, Paris had never left him. He felt the heartbeat of Paris, he heard Paris, he saw the people in the streets, at work, at play, joyous moments, and in the public squares. The city was written on their faces. He moved around keeping and breaking appointments. Henri’s friend, author Dan Hofstadter, says: “It is always an experience to fix a rendezvous with him, to listen as he dithers on the phone.” Yet, dithering did not impede his ability to catch that illusive decisive moment with his camera. His explanation to Russian authorities in 1955, his first trip to Russia, was: “My main interest was in people and that I would like to see them in the streets, in shops, at work, at play, in every visible aspect of daily life…I am neither an economist nor a photographer of monuments and even less a journalist. What I am looking for, above all else, is to be attentive to life.” In Cartier-Bresson’s words: “It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart, and head.” The Tuileries, the Bois, the Races and the Opera, are all parts of Paris. Paris is a mosaic, but clearly the people on the street were where his heart lay… he saw them through the lens of his camera. To the high society he nods, but “doffs his hat to the street people.”
Cartier-Bresson was un fils de famille. His photos do not reflect his privileged background and journalism most certainly was not highly thought of amongst the “fashionable arrondissements.” He was a scion of the Cartier-Bresson firm and grew up in a luxurious apartment on the rue de Lisbonne…an apartment surrounded by grand stately homes built in the late nineteenth century. When Henri was old enough and realized his family was not poor, he felt a guilt towards the working class. Although, his was a frugal family, they didn’t take vacations and his grandfather impressed upon the children that times were hard…for so many, the times were very hard.
“In order to “give meaning” to the world, one has to feel oneself in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry.”—Henri Cartier-Bresson
A particularly lovely description of Henri by Hofstadter is: “…when he puts on his walking shoes and his knapsack and strides through the Tuileries he looks just like a Scandinavian schoolmaster in route to a May Day parade. The half loping-gait, the vulnerable eyes, the boyish satchel—all contribute to the impression of a man in the last blush of life.” At the time Hofstadter knew Henri he was living with his family in an apartment on the fifth floor overlooking the Tuileries described by Hofstadter as a porticoed and pedimented building. The Tuileries was a subject Henri was drawn to.
Rue de Castiglione, 1st arrondissement, August, 1944. White sheets hanging from the Hotel Continental show the German surrender.
Henri had a second house (a bergerie) in the Luberon where Hofstadter visited and describes their time together driving here and there on very bumpy roads. Once while driving around Henri remarked how beautiful the houses were with such perfect proportions lamenting: “People simply cannot make these beautiful things today, and don’t tell me it’s a matter of expense. They’ve lost the sense of geometry.” Hofstadter also took from the conversation that Henri came from a visual family. Henri’s father drew well, took Henri to see antique furniture and his great-grandfather was an artist.
“Cafeteria of the workers’ building, Hotel Metropol, Moscow, 1954.”
Alberto Giacometti portrait, 1961.
A charming memory that Hofstadter relates is of a day trip to L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue with Henri and his wife Martine, and Helen Wright.
They went there to shop and have lunch. I’ve been there a couple of time and have written about it for Classic Chicago Magazine. It is a charming town to explore and to peruse the many antique shops. The description of that luncheon and Henri’s commentary on the bourgeoisie was one of the best accountings I’ve ever read. He did discretely take pictures, but for him the back-ground was not good. It was distracting. He noticed a man opening a gift in a huge box wrapped in electric-blue paper. Inside, was a lampshade. As intriguing was the scene, there was no click of the camera. Ultimately, the background took away from the decisive celebratory moment. During this visit Hofstadter learned that Henri was not a fan of going to the theatre. Cafes were his theatre except for Saint-Germain-des-Prés saying that: “I can never figure out who is what there. Anyone could be anything.” Henri had expressed his opinion of the people he had seen at the restaurant and his thoughts on what they did just by their looks. One afternoon at the bergerie, the author Claude Roy, a guest and friend of Henri’s was visiting from Paris. They had met during the Occupation. There was the sound of a Ping-Pong game coming from the bergerie. Hearing the sound Roy remarked: “I love the sound of Ping-Pong. It’s so light. It’s the Mozart of sports.” There are many such observations and myriad anecdotes in Hofstadter’s book, Temperaments: Memoirs of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Other Artists. It is a terrific read and gives one quite the insight into such an extraordinary photographer.
Cartier-Bresson treasured his privacy and did not like to be photographed for merely being famous…“Wishing to be always the person seeing, never the person seen.” Likening himself to: “In one way, I am like a cop or a whore. I do not want to be photographed.” He never used a flash thinking it, “impolite…like coming to a concert with a pistol in your hand.” He referred to his camera as, “a tool for quick drawing”, and of his photographs, “a visual chronicle…my journal.” Nor did Henri use a light meter or refer to the the f-stop, he knew them by memory and feel. He instinctively shot the “golden section.” Other photographers found it difficult to impossible to work beside him as he was faster and saw more and not that he had a special instinct for a scoop. They simply couldn’t keep up.
Henri Cartier-Bresson self-portrai drawing.
“Photography is a thermometer of mood—in that way, it’s like painting. But for me it is primarily structure, geometry, the golden section. It’s having everything in the right place, a matter of millimeters.”—Henri Cartier-Bresson
In 1947, Cartier-Bresson, four other photographers and two administrators founded Magnum Photos. Joining together they were able to retain their copyrights and legal ownership of their negatives. Magnum Photos still exists. The name, Magnum, came from Robert Capa’s, (one of the founding photographers), favorite drink, magnums of good champagne. Henri arrived in Bombay in September, 1947. On January 30, 1948, he had acquired permission to photograph Gandhi. In the photo, Gandhi was having food for the first time after his fast for peace. Henri showed Gandhi his catalog of photographs from his 1947 show at MOMA. He said good-bye at 4:45 and left. According to Henri’s timeline, fifteen minutes later the Muhatma was assassinated. Henri followed the days of mourning and the funeral. The photos appeared in Life and were part of the 1988 India show at the International Center of Photography in New York…his photos of note capture “the human tide.” Among the portraits he took are those of Camus, Matisse, Colette and Picasso. Henri Cartier-Bresson documented the Liberation of Paris.
Although Henri left Magnum Photos 1966, he still liked to shoot landscapes or spontaneous portraiture. About this time, there were changes in his life. He took up drawing as a profession after he married Martine. “His move into drawing was a clear-eyed attempt to distill the purely structural elements of his pictorial vision leaving the Surrealist and social elements behind in retort of experience.” He continued to draw with pencil and sometimes ink most every day…cityscapes, landscapes, portraits, and prehistoric animal skeletons. From 1937 to 1970, he went to his small apartment/studio to draw.
“You just have to live and life will give you pictures…For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously.” —Henri Cartier-Bresson
As I think of Paris, I remember the words of Audrey Hepburn: “Paris is always a good idea.” Cartier-Bresson’s photos of Paris bring to life in black and white that very good idea.
À bientôt
Quotes and Pictures:
Henri Cartier-Bresson à propos de Paris. A Bulfinch Press Book, Little Brown and Company.
The Mind’s Eye, Writings on Photography and Photographers, by Henrie Cartier-Bresson. Aperture.
Temperaments: Memoirs of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Other Artists, by Dan Hofstadter. Distributed by Open Road Distribution.
