Photographer’s Day or National Photography Day is celebrated every year on January 8, so this week we will make a special series about the best photographers of all time “titled” the great photographers of history “according to the main publications on the subject. To open the series, we’ll start with a photographer we remember in our blog posts here: Henry Cartier-Bresson, a French painter who converted to photography.
Born in the French region of Chanteloup-en-Brie in 1908, to a wealthy industrial family, Henri Cartier-Bresson won his first chamber in his childhood. However, he only discovered his passion for photography during a trip to Africa at the age of 22.
- In 1931.
- When he saw a photograph of three children running towards the sea.
- By the Hungarian Martin Munkacsi.
- Published in Photos magazine.
- Cartier-Bresson truly discovered photography.
- Such an image inspired him:.
“The only thing that was a total surprise to me and that took me to the photo was Munkacsi’s folder. When I saw the picture of the black boys running to the wave, I couldn’t believe that such a thing could be captured by a I took the camera and went out into the street. (?) Suddenly I realized that photography could capture eternity instantly,” Cartier-Bresson said in an interview.
After this episode he acquired the camera that will help him immortalize what his eyes have seen: the famous Leica with a 50 mm lens, which as a child would allow the photographer to record different moments on the street without people noticing that they were being photographed.
Since then, he has begun to roam the streets, capturing flashes of life, scenes that could have been worldly, but which, in Cartier-Bresson’s eyes, have become true works of art. He used black-and-white film and rarely uses flash. Although I love photography, I don’t like to be photographed.
During World War II his career was interrupted: he served in the French army, was captured by German soldiers and considered a prisoner of war, tried unsuccessfully to escape twice, in the third he hid on a farm and obtained false documents to return to France. There, he secretly assisted other prisoners, and, of course, recorded the occupation and liberation of the country at the end of the war.
In 1947, together with photographers Robert Capa, George Rodger, David Seymour and William Vandivert, he founded the famous Magnum Photo Agency, a kind of photographer cooperative that influenced the rise of others around the world.
Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photographs are considered masterpieces because they represent the details of life, of those one does not notice in everyday life. His legacy for photography is immeasurable. With his “Unusual” in photography, he became eternal in his conception of the “decisive moment”, the exact moment when a photo is taken. In his words: when the head, eye, and heart align?To get the picture.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, grand master of 20th-century photography, died in 2004 at the age of 95 in Isle-sur-la-Sorgue. Humanist photographer, left the legacy of an in-depth look at the human condition, so beautifully depicted in his photographs.