Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer and filmmaker. He photographed many different events and is considered a major photographer of the 20th century.

Henri Cartier-Bresson 1948

Early Life

Cartier-Bresson was the first born to a wealthy family on August 22, 1908 in Chanteloup, France. At Lycée Condorcet in Paris, France, Henri began his education. A little later in his life, when he was about 19 years old, he studied painting under the teachings of André Lhote and started taking his first photographs, which eventually caused him to go to Cambridge University to further his knowledge of arts and literature. A few years later, he went to Africa to be a hunter, which led to him becoming interested in photography and purchase his first camera, a 35mm Leica.

Rise as a Photographer

After experimenting with photography, Cartier-Bresson soon realized that he preferred his photographs to be taken without all the artificial enhancements (no artificial lighting, posing, dark room effects, etc), and that they should be edited when the image was made; this was known as candid photography, which where the type of photos he took the most. He became a famous photographer pretty quickly, and was one of the people that made candid photography more well-known. His work was shown in many different exhibits, including Madrid and New York. Shortly after his work in photography took off, he met Paul Strand, who was a photographer who'd started experimenting in filmmaking, which caused him to try filmmaking.

Later in His Life

Later in his life, he continued doing photography, and even photographed Mahatma Gandhi before Gandhi died. In 1966, Cartier-Bresson decided to focus on drawing and painting again. He was pretty private about his life and didn't do very many interviews or talk about his photography. Henri Cartier-Bresson passed away on August 3rd, 2004 in Montjustin, Provence at 95 years old.