Feb 19, 2015 - Sale 2374

Sale 2374 - Lot 57

Price Realized: $ 7,800
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
CARTIER-BRESSON, HENRI (1908-2004)
"Alicante." Silver print, 14x9 3/8 inches (35.6x23.8 cm.), with Cartier-Bresson's signature, in ink, and his embossed blind stamp, on recto. 1933; printed 1980s
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Additional Details

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Europeans, p. 65.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Early Work, p. 134.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Man, the Image, the World, p. 100.


"To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It's a way of life. " -- Henri Cartier-Bresson


Henri Cartier-Bresson was one of the most influential, inventive, and dogged photographer-witnesses of the 20th century, seemingly always in the right place at the right time. A hero in the photographic canon, Cartier-Bresson helped to define the creative potential of the medium. He was a keen observer with a profound ability to capture life, particularly what he referred to as "the decisive moments," with a practiced patience, alertness to clean lines, and simple geometrical happenstance.


Initially drawn to Surrealism through drawing and painting, Cartier-Bresson discovered the Leica, in 1932, and ignited a life-long passion for photography. After being taken as a prisoner of war in 1940, Cartier-Bresson eventually escaped and went on to create a photo department for the French Resistance, and photographed the liberation of Paris in 1945.


Recognizing that photography was a means of communication that could reach a broad audience, in 1947 Cartier-Bresson founded Magnum Photos along with Robert Capa, George Rodger, David 'Chim' Seymour, and William Vadivert. Through Magnum, they were able to maintain control of their work, and give photojournalism the upward mobility to be considered legitimate news. Cartier-Bresson was far more interested in shooting than printing and developing his film. He carefully labeled his negatives and sent them back to the agency, sometimes later horrified to find which of his pictures had been selected to appear in Life, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, The Saturday Evening Post, and New York Times magazine, among many others. His images are universally-recognized icons of 20th-century cultural history.