[Leica] HCB Dies

[csemetko at earthlink.net (Craig Semetko)]

Just saw this; I don't feel so good:

Cartier-Bresson, Who Photographed the 'Decisive Moment,' Dies
Filed at 2:29 p.m. ET

PARIS (Reuters) - Frenchman Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the great 
photographers of the 20th century and a founding father of modern 
photojournalism, has died aged 95, family friends said on Wednesday.

A founder of the Magnum picture agency in 1947 who admirers dubbed 
``the eye of the century,'' Cartier-Bresson died in the south of France 
on Monday, LCI television channel said.

The Web Site of newspaper Liberation said the photographer, an 
intensely private man, was buried on Wednesday in a quiet family 
ceremony at Monjustin, in the Provence region.

``He was the greatest. What he saw was extraordinary,'' said Goksin 
Sipahioglu, founder of Sipa Press photo agency. ``He was a great and 
humble man.

Cartier-Bresson made his name partly by being in the right place at the 
right time, a knack that enabled him to develop his talent for 
capturing in his trade-mark black and white photographs what he called 
the ``decisive moment.''

During a career in which he traveled to more than 20 countries, 
Cartier-Bresson documented some of the most powerful moments and 
figures of the last century.

 From the Spanish Civil war to the liberation of Paris during World War 
II, the death of India's Mahatma Gandhi to the fall of Beijing to Mao 
Zedong's forces in 1949 or the Berlin Wall.

In 1954, the Frenchman also became the first Western photographer 
allowed into the Soviet Union after the death of Soviet dictator Josef 
Stalin the previous year.

Cartier-Bresson's most striking photographs, such as the French boy 
proudly carrying two huge bottles with a little girl giggling behind 
him or the rotund man caught in mid-leap across a Paris puddle, 
illustrate the superb design, insight and gentle good humor 
characteristic of his work.

One of his most famous photographs, the 1938 ``Picnic on the Banks of 
the Marne,'' shows a working-class family enjoying a picnic, innocently 
unaware of the camera's presence.

ANIMAL AND PREY

``In photography, you've got to be quick, quick, quick, quick, like an 
animal and a prey,'' Cartier-Bresson said in a rare filmed interview 
accompanying a 1979 exhibit of his works.

``And you have to try to put your camera between the skin of a person 
and his shirt.''

As a young man, Cartier-Bresson wanted to become a painter and studied 
in Paris with Cubist Andre Lohte and Jacques Emile Blanche, continuing 
to draw and paint throughout his life.

In 1935, he studied film-making in the United States. On his return to 
France he collaborated with Jean Renoir, son of the painter 
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, in making ``La Regle du Jeu'' and ``Partie de 
Campagne,'' two outstanding pre-war French films.

In 1937, he made the documentary ``Victoire de la Vie'' on civil-war 
Spain, but the outbreak of World War II interrupted his film-making 
career. He directed one more documentary in 1944, but then turned 
whole-heartedly to still photography.

The son of a rich industrialist, Henri Cartier-Bresson was born in 
Chanteloup, near Paris, on August 22, 1908. He began taking pictures 
with a simple box camera in the 1930s.

In World War II he spent three years in a German prison camp. He 
escaped twice, was caught, and then escaped again. He joined the French 
resistance and helped others to escape.

The publication in 1952 of ``Images a la Sauvette'' (''The Decisive 
Moment'') marked the height of his technique, although he published 
many collections such as ``China in Transition,'' ``The People of 
Moscow,'' ``Balinese Dancers'' and ``The Europeans.''

Cartier-Bresson quit Magnum in 1966, but continued for a while to take 
photographs, living in Paris with his second wife, photographer Martine 
Franck, and their adopted child.

He set aside his camera in 1974 and concentrated on drawing, another 
lifelong passion, friends said. Last year he set up his own foundation 
in Paris, the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson.