Legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who traveled the world for more than a half-century capturing human drama with his camera, has died, the French Cul-ture Ministry said. He was 95.
Cartier-Bresson shot for Life, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and his work inspired generations of photographers. Cartier-Bresson became a French national treasure, though he was famously averse to having his own picture taken or to giving interviews.
PHOTO: REUTERS
A statement from his family and the Magnum photo agency, which Cartier-Bresson co-founded, said he died on Tuesday and a private funeral was held on Wednesday.
Paul Bruton, a Magnum spokes-man, said he had died at home in Cereste in southeastern France, and was buried in the nearby Alpes-de-Haute-Provence region.
French President Jacques Chirac said: "With him, France loses a genius photographer, a true master and one of the most gifted artists of his generation and most respected in the world."
Whether recording the funeral of Mahatma Gandhi in India or Henri Matisse at home, Cartier-Bresson sought to render the feeling of the moment with his distinctive classical style and penchant for geometrical composition.
"In whatever one does, there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart," he once said in a rare interview. "With the one eye that is closed, one looks within; with the other eye that is open, one looks without."
His photography centered on what he described as "the decisive moment" evoking the significance of a given situation as all the external elements fall into place.
Cartier-Bresson worked only with black-and-white film and without a flash. Thrusting a subject in the limelight, he once said, was a sure way to destroy it.
While most of his international fame was generated from worldwide exhibitions and publications, Cartier-Bresson gained recognition from two documentary films he made, one about medical aid to the loyalists in the Spanish Civil War and the other about French prisoners of war returning home at the end of World War II.
Cartier-Bresson was born Aug. 22, 1908, in Chanteloup outside Paris to a wealthy textile family. At 20, he turned his back on the family business to study painting. He had his first exhibitions in Madrid and New York in 1933.
At the outbreak of World War II, he was drafted into the French army, where he was captured in June 1940. After nearly three years in German prison camps, Cartier-Bresson escaped and returned to Paris, where he transported ex-prisoners for the underground.
In the last 25 years of his life, Cartier-Bresson largely turned away from photography to embrace his first love, painting.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS