Henri Cartier-Bresson : The Decisive Moment

Henri Cartier-Bresson’s <Images à la Sauvette>, acknowledged as one of the most famous books in the history of photography. The exhibition will be a chance to appreciate his photographs and see how these historic works were born.

editor HELENA

One of the most original, influential and beloved figures in the history of photography, Henri CartierBresson pioneered the genre of photojournalism and street photography. In the early 1930s, the photographs by Eugène Atget and Man Ray inspired him to stop painting and to take up photography seriously. He began shooting on his Leica, revealing the hidden drama and idiosyncrasy in the everyday and mundane. The camera was the extension of his eye. Candidly capturing fleeting moments of beauty among the seemingly ordinary happenings of daily life, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work is intuitive and observational. Saying “the photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality”, Cartier-Bresson did not plan or arrange his photographs by having nearly all his photographs printed only at full-frame and completely free of any cropping or other darkroom manipulation. He never photographed with flash. His practice was to release the shutter at the moment his instincts told him the scene was in perfect balance. Paired with his humanist viewpoint, Cartier-Bresson’s photography has become part of the world’s collective memory, which can be defined as “the decisive moment”.

With his inventive work, the photographer was the keenest observer of the global theater of human affairs, and one of the great portraitists of the 20th century.

Dedicated to Cartier-Bresson’s famous publication

<The Decisive Moment>, this exhibition presents a selection of original vintage prints, owned by Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, as well as many archival documents related to the adventure of this book. It features the first 1952 editions in French and English, letters he exchanged with editors and artists, his video interviews, and a Leica camera he used. Lavishly embellished with a collage cover by Henri Matisse, <The Decisive Moment> has received an overwhelming success since its publication in 1952. Considered as “a Bible for photographers” according to Robert Capa’s words, the book’s innovative design struck the art world with its refined format, the heliogravure quality and the strength of the image sequences. Revealing the inherent duality of CartierBresson’s work between the photographer’s intimate interpretation and his documentary approach, the book and its images have influenced generations of photographers. The book features Cartier-Bresson’s major bodies of photographic reportage spanning from 1932 to1952 when he traveled the globe as a photojournalist in the US, India, China, France and Spain. He documented some of the great upheavals of the 20th century such as the assassination and funeral of Mahatma Gandhi, the coronation of King George VI, and the deportation camp in Dessau, Germany.

The photo exhibition <Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Decisive Moment>, which runs through October 2, 2022 at the Seoul Art Center, celebrates the 70th anniversary of his first major book “The Decisive Moment”, assembling Cartier-Bresson’s best work from his early years. N