Best Cartier-Bresson book for me?

<p>Hi</p>

<p>I recently bought 'The Modern Century' book off amazon, hoping to get the photos i wanted by HCB. It is a lovely book and has lots of my favourite photos in, but its missing the type i particularly love. </p>

<p>The little print from pages of his Decisive Moment book is exactly what i love most. People but in really well composed environments. The pictures in Decisive moment are plates 8-11 from 1933. </p>

<p>The photos in The Modern Century are of course beautiful, but seem more focused on people themselves more than the composition of them in their environment.</p>

<p>Is there a book, not Decisive moment as I am poor, that has more of what I want? I also have read the scrapbook, which has a lot of what i like but is not really ideal for me either for other reasons.</p>

<p>Thanks for any help!</p>

<p>I don't know if this will help you, because I'm early in learning of his work. Just a few days ago, I found in a used book store for about $13, "Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Early Work", by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Out of print as far as I know, but here's the cover, as shown at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Henri-Cartier-Bresson-Early-Peter-Galassi/dp/0870702610/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310697400&sr=1-1</p>

<p>The first 1/3 of the book (about 50 pages) is a biographical essay about his youth, is artistic upbringing, the influences that shaped him, and his earliest years with a camera wandering parts of Europe and Mexico from about 1931 through 1934, with some mentioning of WWII-60's. This is followed by about 90 of his images from that early 1930's timeframe. The book went along with the NY MOMA exhibition of these same pieces, as shown in the fall of 1987. The photos in the book are large and very nicely reproduced.</p>

<p>"...Much of his best work after World War II may appropriately be read in the descriptive and narrative terms of photojournalism... Cartier-Bresson's work in the early thirties, his earlier photographic work, is another matter. Trained as a painter, Cartier-Bresson formed his artistic outlook under the rising star of Surrealism, and within a culture whose aspirations and pressures were very different from those that emerged after the war. His early photographs have virtually nothing to do with photojournalism; indeed they insistently and quite inventively subvert the narrative expectations upon which photojournalism depends. Stylistically, too, the early work is different from the work after the war: blunter, less lyrical, and much more severely focused on a narrow range of subjects." (Page 9.)</p>

<p><em>"The photos in The Modern Century are of course beautiful, but seem more focused on people themselves more than the composition of them in their environment." </em>His early work as shown does concentrate on the people, but it demonstrates the direct correlation between these people and their environments- people and setting are interdependent in these photos, the setting is just as important to the photo as the people that are shown in them.</p>

<p>I'm just a few pages into the essay, but so far it is doing a very good job of showing what lead to his life as a photographer. If this sounds like it meets your needs, search out a copy. If it's not quite what you were looking for, find a copy anyway just for the history lesson of what it was that turned him into the artist he became. I think this book will suit you well.</p>

<p>I have several of his books on my "wish list", but I am very happy I ran across this one just by chance. His "The Modern Century", "An Inner Silence", "Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer" are among various titles by the early masters that I hope to bring home at some point.</p>

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