Henri Cartier-Bresson: Scrapbook

by Michel Frizot, Martine Franck (Foreword), Agnès Sire (Introduction)

Henri Cartier-Bresson's famous scrapbook from the 1940s, published in its entirety for the first time. Henri Cartier-Bresson was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1940. After two unsuccessful attempts, he managed to escape in 1943. During this period, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, assuming that the photographer had died in the war, started preparing what they thought would be a posthumous exhibition of his work. When he reappeared, Cartier-Bresson was delighted to learn of the exhibition and decided to review his entire oeuvre and curate it himself. In 1946 Cartier-Bresson traveled to New York with about 300 prints in his suitcase, bought a scrapbook, glued in the photos, and brought that album to MoMA's curators. His exhibition there, a celebration of his survival, opened on February 4, 1947. In the 1990s, Cartier-Bresson once again turned his attention to this scrapbook. Following his death in 2004, the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, the present owner of the prints, finished the job of restoring them, making it possible to bring a large body of his extraordinary work to the public, images that have now become a memorial collection after all.

Genres: Photography, Nonfiction, Art

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 9, 2007

About the author

Michel Frizot is emeritus director of research at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris.

Reviews

[Philippe · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you only want one Cartier-Bresson book in your library, this is the one to have. It is more lively and visceral than the dozens of other overcurated collections of 'decisive moments' that have been produced under the brand of HCB. And it is beautifully, luxuriously produced to boot. The final piece of good news is that, although reported as out-of-print at the publisher's, new copies are still being sold at bargain prices in the summer of 2022. There's a fun biographical story associated with this scrapbook, explained in the back cover text above. Mind you, this is not a facsimile reproduction of the original item, although 13 pages have been included as such (HCB had already unglued most of the over 300 pictures from the rest of the book so they could not be reproduced).

(I'm not a great amateur of HCB's oeuvre. I believe he started out as an adventurous and very hungry hunter of images, with a penchant for the mildly surreal. But from the late 1940s onwards he got stuck in commercial work as a founding member of Magnum and he perfected a style he knew paid handsomely. All in the name of that damned "Composition! Geometry!" A photo journalist, a tradesman was born but an artist had passed away. And when the appetite of the general press for premium journalism dwindled, he put his Leicas in the cupboard and went back to his passion for (very classical) drawing. Later in life he prided himself on having learned everything from his old teachers - André Lothe in painting and Jean Renoir in film making - and not really having developed since. His work seems to confirm this, but it is to my mind a disavowal of a genuinely artistic project ...)

[Stacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

one reason that you should buy this book is that henri cartier-bresson was one of the most talented photographers in the history of the genre, and no matter what your take or your bent, everyone who has come after him has copped a feel from his take on seeing the world.

another reason that you should get this book is that it is a beautiful collection of rarely seen and completely edited and arranged by the photographer himself. the book itself is huge; it would be in the oversize section of any library. additionally, it was just published this year, and art monographs of this sort often run out of publication within the first year, and then the prices for them on the used market soar first into the hundreds, and then into the thousands of dollars. this will be one of those books. so buy one now while they're still under $100.00

the story behind this "scrapbook" was that bresson was taken as a prisoner of war during wwii, and presumed dead. MOMA decided to mount a retrospective memorial of his work, and during the planning stages, bresson emerged from the p.o.w. camps, thrilled at the fêting his reported demise seemed to inspire. he volunteered to help curate the exhibit himself, and started assembling, editing and sequencing the images you have in this collection. after the exhibition, bresson stuck his glued-in prints and scrapbook in an old suitcase and left it in an unused closet in his parents' home. when bresson died in 2006 and his belongings were being gone through, this "lost work" re-emerged. so glad that it has. it has heft, visual weight, and like looking at the early drawings of an old master, lend definitive clues as to how his eye evolved and what kinds of things it sought out.

a must must must have.

[Animesh · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the legend of photography, this book is a gem. The book brings together a collection of some 75 photos taken by Cartier-Bresson in the 1930s and 40s in Africa (just a few), in Mexico, and in war-torn Europe. The book serves the purpose of a biography, perhaps a more insightful one than a real biography in words, because in several cases a series of photos taken by the master in rapid succession are presented together with the final selection. So we see that the legend is really very human, that he did not always click only one frame of the 'decisive moment', and we get a glimpse of his thought processes. The photos are subtle, never decorative, never dramatic, always avoiding the cliche, and always trying to portray the humanistic basis of our times. The narrative is insightful, if tedious. The prints are gorgeous. The binding is a treasure.

[Hirondelle (not getting notifications) · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Christmas present (ok, hand picked by me) and oh so perfect. About the photos itself, the wonder of his vision I am speechless, what can a person say but look and look again and again? The album is marvelous, though a warning, this facsimile has *small* prints, particular the multiple pages which are themselves reduced by 15%.

[Blain]

Photographer I need to study

[James Moes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminds me to stick with the wide-angle lens.