Henri Cartier Bresson

Born on August 22, 1908, in Chanteloup-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne, France, he witnessed and documented - in his hand-held 35-millimeter Leica camera - some of the world's most defining moments and episodes, including the Spanish Civil War, the partition of India and the German occupation of France among others. Carietr-Bresson also pioneered the genre of street photography and most famously viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment.
On his 15th death anniversary, here's looking at a few interesting facts of the famed photographer.

-As a child, he was a proud owner of a Box Brownie, and would take snapshots during his school holidays.

During his career, he documented portraits of Camus, Picasso, Colette, Matisse, Pound and Giacometti.

-He started his career in Africa, particularly the former French colony Côte d’Ivoire.
In 1932, he placed his first photography work for exhibition in New York at the Julien Levy Gallery.

-In 1935, he again exhibited more of his work at the same gallery, along with fellow photographers Robert Capa and David Seymour.

-The Surrealist movement, founded in 1924, influenced the photographer a lot and Cartier-Bresson began socializing with the Surrealists at the Café Cyrano. He was drawn to the Surrealist movement's technique of using the subconscious and the immediate to influence their work.

-In 1929, Cartier-Bresson met American expatriate Harry Crosby at Le Bourget who presented Henri with his first camera.

-He acted in renowned French film director Jean Renoir's 1936 film Partie de Campagne and in the 1939 La Règle Du Jeu, for which he played a butler and served as second assistant.

-Cartier-Bresson's first photojournalist photos to be published came in 1937 when he covered the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.

-Henri Cartier-Bresson tied the knot with a Javanese dancer Ratna Mohini in 1937. The couple divorced 30 years later. He then married Martine Franck and together they had a daughter namely Mélanie.

-In early 1947, Cartier-Bresson, with Robert Capa, David Seymour, William Vandivert and George Rodger founded the famed Magnum Photos.

-He was one of the last people to have met Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948. According to reports, he had shown Gandhi a small catalogue of his one-man exhibition in New York and fifteen minutes after Cartier-Bresson left, Bapu was assassinated.

-Cartier-Bresson's method of using only available light, and editing "in the camera" influenced Satyajit Ray in making his Apu Trilogy.

-Cartier-Bresson retired from photography in the early 1970s, and by 1975 no longer took pictures other than an occasional private portrait.

-Instead, he returned to drawing and painting, holding his first exhibition of drawings at the Carlton Gallery in New York in 1975.

-Cartier-Bresson did not like being photographed, and when he accepted an honorary degree from Oxford University in 1975, he held a paper in front of his face to avoid being photographed.

Music :Kevin Macleod

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