Henri Cartier-Bresson, Madrid, Spain, 1933
In 1940 Henri Cartier-Bresson was taken prisoner by the Germans and 'disappeared' for three years. All communications with the photographer ceased and it was assumed that he had died at war. Nancy and Beaumont Newhall, curators at MoMA in New York, responded by starting to prepare a posthumous exhibition of Cartier-Bresson's work. When the photographer resurfaced in 1943, after his third attempt at escaping, he was delighted to learn about the exhibition and decided to review his entire work with this in mind: had he really died and were the MoMA show to have taken place, which photographs would he have liked to see in it?
The exhibition did go ahead four years later in 1947, shortly before Cartier-Bresson co-founded Magnum. He selected around 300 pictures for the exhibition, mostly unpublished at the time, and took them to New York pasted into a large scrapbook. These photographs, taken between 1932 and 1946, cover various trips made to Italy, Spain, Mexico, London at the time of the coronation of George VI, the return of prisoners of war at the end of the war, portraits of Henri Matisse, Georges Braque and Pierre Bonnard, and of writers such as Camille Claudel, Jean-Paul Sartre and Paul Eluard.
Almost half a century later, Cartier-Bresson once again became interested in this scrapbook which is now being published by Steidl and the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris. The 300 or so photographs show in New York in 1947 are also being exhibited again at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson.
'Henri Cartier-Bresson's Scrapbook'
21 September to 23 December
Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
2, impasse Lebouis
75014 Paris
The cover of Henri Cartier-Bresson's original scrapbook.
For more information on the facsimile edition being published by Steidl click here. |
