If you live in New York and haven’t seen the brilliant “Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century” at the Museum of Modern Art, get yourself over there today before 5:30 pm—it’s the last day of the show.
Bill and Maureen and I went to see the exhibition last month. Here’s a little iPhone snap I took of Bill near one of the legendary lensman’s most famous photos:
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This was the first Cartier-Bresson show Maureen had seen, and as we toured the exhibition, she recalled the first time she ever saw his work.
“I was a college student, traveling in Europe on a Eurail pass with my boyfriend, who was a painter,” she told me. “We went to Paris, and in an open-air market, they had these little framed picture postcards. I bought three or four of them, and three of the four ended up being by the same artist: Cartier-Bresson. I was just totally drawn to his work.”
Here’s one of the photos featured on the postcards Maureen bought:
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"Rue Mouffetard, Paris," 1954, by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery.
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• Henri Cartier-Bresson and Helen Levitt side by side, Laurence Miller Gallery
• “A Photographer Whose Beat Was the World,” New York Times review
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One Comment
We were in Paris last may and we have seen exhibition by Henri Cartier-Bresson at the Musée de l’Art Moderne,
his work is such an inspiration specially this image of the jumping man Place de l’Europe, all of his work his vision,are source of great learning and fun. we just met our friend charlie Roth yesterday, he was a magnum director for three years, we spoke about how he met Henri for lunch he showed him 3 portfolios of photographers that he was trying to convince them to join Magnum, there is a wonderful documentary about him called The Impassioned Eye