Quai St. Bernard, Paris

Henri Cartier-Bresson

1932, printed 1946 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

Although he had made pictures from an early age, it was only in 1931 that Cartier-Bresson found his calling as a photographer. First with an unwieldy box camera then in 1932 with a 35mm camera (a new compact Leica), he set out to photograph life in the streets of various cities in his native France and abroad. He quickly developed what would become a hallmark of twentieth-century photographic style. In his landmark 1952 monograph The Decisive Moment, Cartier-Bresson defined his philosophy: “To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which gave that event its proper expression.”

Artist

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Date

1932, printed 1946

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell, 1987