Henri Cartier-Bresson 12 february-9 june 2014

Lately in Paris I visited in Georges Pompidou Museum in Beaubourg the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition. Born on 22 august 1908 in Chanteloup-en-Brie, he began his photographic work in the Twenties. He can be recalled for his genius for composition and his ability to capture the most elusive and significant instants as they happened, laying the foundation for modern photojournalism . In the exhibition itself we can see a small movie  where the artist may be seen strolling in the streets of Paris , with his famous Leica , during the Chinese new year’s celebration, and as a hunter, trying to take into photo the « decisive moment ».
What I’ve learnt, I didn’t know before,  is that he has been first influenced by the Surrealists . He retained ( and we may find  it in  his pictures ) a number of motifs emblematic of the Surrealists’ world such as wrapped objects, deformed bodies and dreamers with closed eyes …
Then like  many Surrealists he joined the Communist party and his first photo-reports have been commissioned by the Communist press. Between 1935 and 1945 he gave up photography for film in order to find a wider audience. After war he decided to become a photojournalist and founded  the cooperative Magnum Photos.
This exhibition is a very good opportunity to look back on the 20th century through the lens of an artist, everything is there ; jazz age of the 1920s, colonial Africa, the Spanish civil war, developing human rights, capitalistic expansion, the world war, decolonisation, America booming, the collapse of the Soviet Union…
The exhibition will last until 9 june 2014, it’s better to arrive at the opening of the museum (11 a.m.) otherwise then there is often more than an hour waiting because of the crowd, that’s the problem with that kind of big exhibitions in Paris …



P.S: Please feel free to point out big mistakes in my messages, this way I'have already improved my level.

Hi Jean-Pierre,

Thank you for the words about this exhibition.

2 links:
-> http://www.centrepompidou.fr/cpv/ressource.action?param.id=FR_R-8528b4338f3fde2beee8388769730d1&param.idSource=FR_E-8528b4338f3fde2beee8388769730d1
-> http://www.centrepompidou.fr/media/imp/M5050/CPV/b7/cb/M5050-CPV-b34e3a62-934f-430a-b7cb-27ca20fc1fca.pdf

thank you Muriel and gerard for the adds