Henri Cartier-Bresson

I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to “trap” life – to preserve life in the act of living. Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.
– Henri Cartier-Bresso

surveying Cartier-Bressons entire career

In cooperation with Magnum Photos, Fotografiska presents the ultimate retrospective of Henri Cartier-Bresson. It consists of about 250 photographs, including rare and never shown before, surveying Cartier-Bressons entire career, as well as a generous collection of classic photographs.

Together with photographers such as Robert Capa, David “Chim” Seymour, George Rodger and Bill Vandivert, Henri Cartier-Bresson founded the esteemed picture agency Magnum Photos. Magnum photographers have covered most of the historic events during the last decades and taken many of the most outstanding pictures. Henri Cartier-Bresson regarded photography as a way to tell stories about life. He was present in Spain during the Civil War, in Germany when the concentration camps were liberated, in China during the fall of Kuomintang and Mao’s march into Beijing, and he experienced the radical left movement during the student revolts in Paris in 1968.

Henri Cartier-Bresson had an almost uncanny talent at capturing moments in life with his Leica. He coined the expression, “the decisive moment” – the art of perfect timing, being able to release the shutter at the exact fraction of a second. “For me, the camera is a sketch book”, wrote Cartier-Bresson, “an instrument of intuition and spontaneity. In order to ‘give a meaning’ to the world, one has to feel involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry”. For example, Henri Cartier-Bresson never cropped his pictures, he composed them in the viewfinder.

This retrospective exhibition at Fotografiska includes work from all periods of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s life. From the artistic and the avant-garde pictures from the 1930’s, to his photojournalistic work and his portraits of Alberto Giacometti, Simone de Beauvoir and Truman Capote, among others.

The exhibition is curated by Robert Delpire and produced in collaboration with Magnum Photos and Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson.