Henri Cartier-Besson death

It has been reported that Henri Cartier-Bresson has died at the age

of 95.

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For more information please see:

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<a

href="http://www.startribune.com/stories/466/4910970.html">http://www.

startribune.com/stories/466/4910970.html</a>

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or in French <a href="http://www.liberation.fr/page.php?

Article=228460">http://www.startribune.com/stories/466/4910970.html</a

>

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Thanks to Antony Bichon for origially posting this news in the

Photography News forum. I though it reasonable to break our "no

crossposting" rule in this case.

See also:

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<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3536742.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3536742.stm</a>

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<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3536724.stm">http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3536724.stm</a>

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Yahoo has an AP story on its home page.

 

www.yahoo.com

I just saw it on the news here in Catalonia. Idon't know in which way but some homage could be made from this site. He has been mentioned so often. For starters it would be nice to know what photoneters enjoyed in his work.

A great loss to the world.

 

His work will live on for eternity.

 

rob

A terrible loss... I saw a few of his prints in France last month. They were stunning.

His eye and talent was one of the greatest gifts to street photography. His greatest lesson, the concept of the 'decisive moment,' will never cease to live on in the world of photography. God bless that brilliant photographer.

R.I.P., Henri. You have certainly left your marks in this world. We'll always remember you when we see your creations.

You can also see the news in the front page of NY Times but you need to register to read it. (Register, it's free.)

 

The link is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/obituaries/04CND-CARTIER.html?hp">here</a>.

Farewell, Henri. You were an inspiration.

The decisive moment, indeed.

I didn't even know he was still alive, amazing how some photographers have spanned and worked over almost the entire history of photography as we know it.

In 1980, I was 13 year old boy. That year, I saw a very little exhibition in Liege, a depressed industrial town in Belgium. There were only 16 images on the wall but, god, what did these 16 pictures do to me!

It was an exhibition called "Images of the Pays Franc". A work he did for some local authorithy in also depressed Northern France.

 

These 16 images changed my life.

 

 

I have been looking since then to see these images again but they never were published anywhere, until last month...someone posted the catalogue of the exhibition on eBay. What a joy to admire them again 24 years later.

 

RIP

There's an interesting article about him, written in 1998 on his 90th birthday, that you can read at <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/cartierbresson/story/0,14921,1276082,00.html">http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/cartierbresson/story/0,14921,1276082,00.html</a>

Merci Henri Cartier-Besson

HCB was my inspiration to a life of recording the human spirit.

i am a photographer because of his influence and his photographs.

While very young, a mentor entered my life and together they gave me the thrill,joy and deep appreciation of life and humanity.

To Henri of France and Alex(my little father),Merci.

Making it to 95 ain't too shabby. The longevity of people like HCB and Picasso (as well as

many others) makes a good argument for keeping the "creative juices" flowing well into

old age.

 

He was certainly an inspiration to me. This year I finally broke down and bought a print

from him. I'm very glad that I did.

There was no one more relevant ever than HCB. No one.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a miserable, cantankerous old so-and-so in his later years.

 

He had taken up painting and virtually disowned his photography as a trivial pursuit, in deference to painting. It's funny how his photographs were un-retouched, un-cropped and printed "flat" (and always printed by others). They were presented, without artifice, as a neutral window into the "real life" decisive moments he was photographing. It was the subject matter that was most important to him, shown without artistic effects in order to portray their essence. His photographs were really a representation of his eye's view on life and its many arrangements, rather than views in themselves that existed in their own right.

 

Then, going over to painting, he reversed all the realism in favour of impressionistic representation. In my view, he was always a much better photographer than painter. Yet, especially in his last quarter century, he wasn't all that interested in what people thought of his photography. In what he really wanted to do and be, he was ultimately a sad and lonely man, who believed his true voice was being ignored. That's why he became so cranky in his later years... in my opinion anyway, from viewing a couple of TV interviews he made in the past couple of years.

 

So many great artists - and people in general - do well what they couldn't care less about. And in what they want to do, they are only average. It's one of the great frustrations, isn't it? I think we could do worse than learn how to cope with our disappointments and make the best of them. To spend our lives in a state of chronic ire at our failings is such a waste of time.

 

Still, a great milestone. I don't call it a loss, as his work survives and will always inspire and instruct.

 

 

Most importantly, his creative agony is finally over.

Part of the tragedy is of the artist is that there is no real goal in achieving what you are

naturally good at. The real satisfaction lies in the things you accomplish by practice and

effort.

HCB inspired me to pick up and seriously use a camera 8 years ago; he showed me how street, candid, and black and white photography is both relevant and timeless. He outlived many of his Magnum contemporaries, and leaves us an unforgettable legacy. Everyone I've introduced HCB's images (in books) to leaves inspired, sometimes awestruck by the simplicity and beauty. Merci, Henri.

This is a great loss, but we lost HCB 25 years ago when he more or less gave up photography for drawing and painting. To this I say "Good for him!" He may have felt he said all he needed to say through his photography. When Robert Frank was asked why he didn't make another book like "The Americans", he replied "I've already done that. To make another would I would have been repeating myself". At least is was something to that effect. Besides, perhaps HCB felt he just wasn't up to the physical demands of street photography. Let's be honest, everyone at some point when they get up in the later years slow down, their hands may shake, the eyesight just keeps getting worse for some, the can't move as quickly and so fourth. HCB may have felt that his art would have suffered if he had to try to overcome the effects of age in order to try to produce work on the level of his younger days. Just a thought.

Cheers,

Marc

Yes, Brett, you're right about the universal appeal of Cartier-Bresson's photographs. I know of no person who has seen his work - artistic, worker, well educated or not, well grounded in the arts or not - who has not come away from a viewing other than uplifted.

 

And you're right about the simplicity of his images; or more accurately the apparent simplicity. There is an almost unbelieveable lightness in his vision, a mood that is always optimistic. Several witness to some of his most famous photographs have said he barely stopped, hardly turned his head when he took the picture. He perfected a technique of being able to technically record what his mind's eye saw - focussed, framed and correctly exposed - and to achieve this prolifically.

 

His technical prowess was aided by using forgiving black and white negative film that could be printed up or down a stop or two easily. It is said he pre-focussed his 50mm lenses to 4 metres and used depth of field to do the rest. That the flaws in the prints arising from this technique (and there are many, if you ever get a chance to look up close at originals) become invisible due to the overwhelming truthfulness of the image as a whole (I am speaking here of his published works, of course... he must have had many failures too) says a lot about the quality of his legacy.

 

In fact his technique was so good, that I've often wondered whether it wasn't just a knack involving quick reflexes and say, the right sized hands for the Leica camera he used. If it was a knack, does the trivialness of it detract from the images? I've never been able to answer that one. One of his most famous pictures, taken at the Gare Saint-Lazare in Paris was taken through the gap between two fence palings, without him looking through the viewfinder (he admitted this with great glee in a recent documentary shown on Australian TV). Is it any less a near-perfect photograph for that? Or are we missing the point? Perhaps it is not the photograph but the vision that should be celebrated, the medium being almost trivial (except to those trying vainly to emulate his work).

 

And what particular "decisive moment" do we celebrate when viewing the image? A man about to jump into a puddle? Something that banal? Maybe that was Cartier-Bresson's final photographic triumph: he presented the banal in a compelling way, full of humor and cheek. Why is it that so many of the ikonic images of the 20th century are of such dramatic events (Capa's soldier, Burrows' Khe Sahn mud, the Hindenburg and so on), yet Cartier-Bresson's contributions to this gallery of greatness are almost entirely of everyday events, not at all "newsworthy", yet so universally appealing?

 

To add another level of paradox to the story, the old man was (not too strong a word at all) contemptuous of both his own photographic work and the reaction of others to it (especially after he retired from photography abut 30 years ago). To him, as Joris put it, it was because he was "naturally good at" seeing the world around him and couldn't figure out how so many were enchanted by something he found so easy to do. Coming from an affluent family he didn't need to earn a living in his younger years and had ample time to theorize about art and to meet famous artists: to become a member of an artistic clique in the Paris of the twenties and thirties. He could buy an expensive camera and travel widely, doing little but taking photographs. In those days the concept of a "snapshot" was a new one. Portability of equipment and high-speed miniature film were almost a novel combination. What we now regard as the artform of "street" or "decisive moment" photography was a blank page waiting to be written upon, to be defined. Just as Picasso could be said to have defined modern painting (to simplify art history greatly), Cartier-Bresson defined the new, portable art of peripatetic photography. It is a happy coincidence that both men (and there are other examples than these) not only founded their respective arts, but were their greatest exponents. And that it all took place in Paris.

 

I wonder whether this will ever happen again, such an amazing confluence of time, talent and place. Our manufactured heroes today kill, rob or lie for a living. They rarely do great works, other than of engineering or making money. Their so-called achievements are touted by paid publicity agents and political spin doctors. Cartier-Bresson's great success was garnered from a simple camera, carried around with him wherever he went. He eschewed sycophants. He kept his art direct, uncluttered and unsensational. I have often wondered whether he didn't see himself as a "junior" achiever, the forever present documenter of his great and talented acquaintances, but still basically a wallflower to their existence and their influence on the arts. And if so, whether that is why he came to loathe photography so much. Was it a reminder of what he may have seen as his secondary place in the artistic lives of his contemporaries?

 

Painting and drawing were his first and last loves. When he came back to painting in later life his renewed enthusiasm may have been a product of his wanting to be finally accepted by his contemporaries; the irony being that he had outlived them all. His photography, depending as it did on a knack for being able to record as well as see an event, may well have been - to him - too trivial a thing to concern himself over, except in jest.

 

He took the chance to reinvigorate the passions of his youth and found them as compelling as his memory recalled. That others did not seem to share his recommittment was the penalty for living too long.

 

It's quite sad to learn about HCB passing away. I just bought HCB's book on India

yesterday and I keep thumbing through a bunch of his books I borrowed from the library.

His art is most admirable.

RIP, Henri. And thanks to Tony Dummett for a clear-eyed but insightful obituary.