Product Description

The 20th century was the century of the image - and Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) was the eye of the century. To tell his life story and to interpret his work means first and foremost to write the history of his vision. As he traversed the century, the eye of this clear-sighted wanderer focused on the fascination of Africa in the 1920s, the tragic fate of the Spanish Republicans, and the victory of the Chinese communists. Cartier-Bresson the photographer was always on the spot, the great pickpocket of life's historic events as and when they were happening. He was also assistant to Jean Renoir on three major films. He was an artist who wanted to be an artisan, but he also founded Magnum, the most famous of all photographer's agencies. It was he who fixed in our minds the features of his famous contemporaries: Giacometti and Sartre as characters from their own works, Mauriac mysteriously levitating, Faulkner, Camus and countless others captured at the decisive moments in portraits for eternity. Henri Cartier-Bresson confided in Pierre Assouline over a long period of time on the subjects of his youthful devotion to surrealism, his unending passion for drawing, the war and the prison camps, the friends and the women in his life. He even opened up his archives. Assouline gives an acute and extremely interesting account of Cartier-Bresson's life and philosophy in this vivid portrait of the man in all his complexity - his charm, inquisitiveness and arrogance, but above all, his brilliance.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #52080 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 280 pages

About the Author
Pierre Assouline has published several biographies of cultural figures, among them books on Georges Simenon and Herge. He is also editor-in-chief of Lire Magazine in Paris.

Customer Reviews

Sad but moving
Admirers of HCB can be disapointed. Reading that great photographer (not artis as his own words), was disapointed with actual (1966) doing photography and specially edit, print and publish photography in a vision he mastered. So that is why he stopped doing it professionally. Sad reading because nothing changed in a print media in the last 40 years, things went much worse and worse. There are editors, journalists who should educate readers through their choise. Photographers led the way and they still should do that. Owners of newspapers and magazines should not worried about theirs profit.
They should stop filling readers heads with glamour which does not exist. It is just put the real problems away. Real problem of recent journalism is communication. That was photography of HCB about. To communicate. Moving, because journalism must and will change.

J.