French master photographer; exhibited from 1934 with work regarded as one of the glories of postwar photojournalism.
A member of an old French family who had a textile firm, he trained as a painter. After a year-long stay on Africa’s Ivory Coast, he returned, dissatisfied with the slowness of painting. Recuperating from a case of black fever contracted while in Africa, he bought a Leica, a small 35mm camera. He called it “my other eye.” His travels in the early 30s took him through Eastern Europe, Africa, France, Spain and Italy. He also dabbled in filmmaking, working with French director Jean Renoir. In 1937 he directed one of several documentaries about medical aid to the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War. While serving with the French Army in WW II, he first entered photojournalism for the Resistance, then for the Press. He was captured in June of 1940, spending the next 35 months in a German POW camp. He was just in time to go to New York in 1946 to work on what was to have been a posthumous exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. Three hundred images had been organized while he was imprisoned and presumed dead. In 1954, the Louvre showed his photographs in its first photo exhibition. He showed once again in 1966, becoming the only photographer to have two one-man shows in the Louvre. Over many travels, his work developed most markedly in Mexico. He had great vision, a sense of surrealism mixed with simplicity, allowing the picture to tell the story. “Henri Cartier-Bresson Photographer” Photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson with an introduction by Yves Bonnefoy was published in 1993.
He was married with one daughter; a lifelong Parisian.
The world-famous photographer died on August 2, 2004 at his home in l?Ile-sur-Sorgue in the Vaucluse region of France. Cartier-Bresson was three weeks shy of his 96th birthday.
Link to Wikipedia biography