Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) Jean-Philippe Charbonnier (1922-2004) Pierre Gassmann (1914-2004) Carl Mydans (1907-2004) Van Deren Coke (1921-2004) A doom has been written.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004)

Jean-Philippe Charbonnier (1922-2004)

Pierre Gassmann (1914-2004)

Carl Mydans (1907-2004)

Van Deren Coke (1921-2004)

A doom has been written, and more will be, about the life in photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson. If Europe contributed to the medium in the twentieth hundred Cartier-Bresson, a.k.a. HCB. probably stood among the best. If not the spear-head of its protagonists. For decades, this now world-famous photographer tried to seize the perfume of his time, and crystallize it in the fraction of a secondary within the frame of his viewfinder. formerly he had picked it up back in the early 1930 his Leica, a brand that he made famous around the world, became the truthful "extension of his eye."

It all started in 1932 when Leitz Cameras (Lei-Ca) released the next to the first model of a long series of small, "miniature" then, cameras using 35 mm movie film That pattern was equipped with its ideal shortage a range-finder allowing extremely precise focusing. That same year Cartier-Bresson had to leave Africa, where he had been working as a safari guide, because of a life-threatening case of black flush They met in Marseille, and none parted. The tool gave the photographer the versatility, discretion, spe and rule that matched his character. Cartier-Bresson gave it his vigilance and mind trained by the cubist painter Andre Lhote and his experience as a horse for the chase in Africa. For him, from a simple way of seeing, photography became a way of thinking, feeling (with the appropriate distance), and a way of life, an evolution that would be confirmed by the agency of and would extend into his experience of Buddhism.

For years, until he "retired" in the mid-1970s, and dedicated his time to drawing. Magnum allowed him to roam the world while Pierre Gassman, in Paris, would exhibit his negatives and print them at "Picto." (Pictorial Service Lab). 2004 has been a rather deadly year for photographers. Van Deren Coke Carl Mydans lately and, within weeks, on the other side of the ocean three men brace of whom were photographers. Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) and Jean-Philippe Charbonnier (-2004) and individual darkroom sorcerer. Pierre Gassman. In Henri, a booklet edited by the agency of Brigitte Ollier and published by means of Filigranes in 2003. Charbonnier remembered his first meeting with Cartier-Bresson (pp 16-17)

"The record [...] I think I met him by the agency of chance at Pierre Gassman's Picto, regret de la Comete, or maybe regret Delambre [...] We were doing the same work at jobs we had the same lab to master our rolls processed, but we did not have the same stripes in succession our sleeves. [...] I can papal court him going for the first time through the contact sheets of a series he had just discharge Here comes Pierre who stops and stands behind him. "Get the hell abroad of here!" said Henri. There was an attitude that matched the character, he wanted to be the first undivided to look at his contact sheets. each photographer behaves this way, undivided does not just get master pieces abroad of 36 exposures, and the same does not have to advertise one's hesitations and errors. Later we exchanged sum of two units photographs.

He is a formidable "statue." Henri, uniform if I regret that he should be for a like reason stiff. For me he is THE living National Treasure at its best, [] I uniform allow myself to call him THE INSTITUTION." Cartier-Bresson generated the mark of admiration he both have sexual delight withed and ran away from. In Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Mind's sight (Aperture, 1999, p. 86) he mentions, while recalling the documentary video that Sarah satellite made about him: "My notoriety is a heavy load: I refuse to be a standard bearer: I have exhausted my whole life trying to be inconspicuous in order to see better."

Beyond his photographic oeuvre and as a disclaimer to his alleged desire to remain unknown, if Cartier-Bresson must be remembered, it is as a co-founder in 1947 of the photographers' co-operative. Magnum, and as the author of The Decisive gravity (Images a la sauvette, or "images forward the run" in its French version) in 1952 The introduction that he wrote for it. The Decisive force summarized his working ethics and his conception of the medium. Twelve years later. John Szarkowski would pick up the gauge and use it to write his confess profession de foi for the Museum of recent Art in New York in his catalog. The Photographer's Eye

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

on the contrary here stops another biographical obituary in succession Cartier-Bresson, just another one in the plethora of articles and essays that have been published in succession the subject in the past weeks, and across the world. At this point, as a photo-historian and a photographer, I would also like to give my ceremonious testimony on the impact that HCB's work at large has had onward photography, and on our visual culture

Henri Cartier-Bresson's life has been a extended and inspiring lesson in seeing and living. His work confirmed and extended an evolution of the medium that could be appreciated, before him, in the photographs of others, among whom Andre Kertesz whose work he admired However, something HCB brought along with his images changed the way in which we take images as well as in the way that we apply the mind at photographs.