Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908 - 2004) is one of the first photographer who made street photography his career.
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(From The International Photography Hall of Fame): HCB was born in 1908 in Chanteloup, France. Throughout his childhood, Cartier-Bresson was interested in the arts. He was influenced by his father, a respected and wealthy textile merchant and his uncle, an accomplished painter.
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As a young boy Cartier-Bresson read the literature of the day by authors such as Dostoyevsky, Rimbaud, Proust, and Joyce. In addition to literature, he intensely studied painting.
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Cartier-Bresson had always been restless and conservatism did not suit him. It was also a time when many artists were experimenting to further the theory of art. He befriended Rene Crevel and soon began to practice surrealism.
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"I was marked, not by surrealist painting, but by the conceptions of Breton, which satisfied me a great deal: the role of spontaneous expression and of intuition and, above all, the attitude of revolt."
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In 1928 Cartier-Bresson attended Cambridge University, England, where he studied literature and painting. It was here that he was introduced to film and photography. By 1929 he began to take photography seriously.
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In 1931, Cartier-Bresson discovered the hand-held Leica camera and was practically consumed by the new art form. He made the conscious decision to pursue photography as a career.
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"I kept walking the streets, high-strung, and eager to snap scenes of convincing reality, but mainly I wanted to capture the quintessence of the phenomenon in a single image. Photographing, for me, is instant drawing, and the secret is to forget you are carrying a camera."
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"'Manufactured’ or staged photography does not concern me. And if I make a judgement it can only be on a psychological or sociological level.
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There are those who take photographs arranged beforehand and those who go out and discover the image and seize it."
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"For me the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant, which in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously."
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Thus evolved a theory, not entirely his, but definitely practiced by Cartier-Bresson and forever associated with his name, The Decisive Moment.
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The original phrase came from Cardinal de Retz who stated everything in the world has its decisive moment.
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Roaming the streets, Cartier-Bresson would photograph moments most eyes would surpass for everyday life, but to him these were the true moments of human existence.
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