Title:
Ile de la Cite
Style: documentary/photojournalism
Period: 20th Century
Medium: Photographs, Silver print
Year: 1952
Print/Casting Year: ie. circa 2000
Size: height - 16 in, width - 20 in, depth - 0 in
Markings: signed, stamped, lower right corner, stamped lower left corner
Estimate: from $10,000 to $15,000
Seller's Description:
Ile de la Cite
Silver print
16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm.)
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908- 2004) is widely recognized as one of the greatest photographers of the 20th Century. In 1932, after spending a year in the Ivory Coast, he discovered the Leica - his camera of choice thereafter - and began a life-long passion for photography. In 1933 he had his first exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. He later made films with Jean Renoir.
In 1945 he photographed the liberation of Paris with a group of professional journalists and then filmed the documentary Le Retour.
In 1947 he along with Robert Capa and others, founded Magnum Photos. After three years spent travelling in the East, in 1952 he returned to Europe, where he published his first book, Images à la Sauvette.
He explained his approach to photography in these terms, '"For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression."
In 2003 he created the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris for the preservation of his work. Cartier-Bresson received an extraordinary number of prizes, awards and honorary doctorates. He died at his home in Provence on 3 August 2004, a few weeks short of his 96th birthday.
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