Talk:Henri Cartier-Bresson

Implied Conflation of Street Photography With Candid Photography

By following one after the other in the opening paragraph it gives the impression that his street photography was candid in nature. In fact, while he took candid photos for sure, much of his street photography was posed. And he is still considered an originator of the genre and many of his posed photos are given as examples of it. For example his image of the Mexican Prostitutes or the image of "Plasterers in the 15th arrondissement. Paris, France. 1932." on the Magnum Photography page. In fact as sort of pointed out, the term Decisive Moment wasn't even his and he really meant getting the right time to take the shot. And in further point of fact, many of the photographs he put in that book are posed and/or are certainly not candid.

Later Years Dates Muddled

The following dates are out of order, and repeats itself WRT drawing/painting and portraiture/landscapes: "In 1968, he began to turn away from photography and return to his passion for drawing and painting. Cartier-Bresson withdrew as a principal of Magnum (which still distributed his photographs) in 1966 to concentrate on portraiture and landscapes. In 1967, he was divorced from his first wife, Ratna "Elie"." Lopifalko (talk) 09:47, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Death date

There is still some confusion about the date of HCB's death. Most sources say he died on Monday, August 2, but some (American) sources claim he died on Tuesday morning. All sources concur that he was buried on Wednesday. - Karl Stas 22:26, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Telegraph obituary (not American) says August 3. - Nunh-huh 02:51, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I checked the French press. Le Monde and Le Figaro say he died on Monday, Libération says Tuesday! - Karl Stas 08:15, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Until it is resolved then, it isn't appropriate to report a certain date. "Died 2 or 3 August 2004" may be the best we can do. - Nunh-huh 08:34, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The contradicting media reports are based on two press releases, one by the French Ministry of Culture and another by Magnum Photos. The former puts the time of death on Monday, the latter on Tuesday morning. It is not entirely clear which version is endorsed by the family. The original text of the press releases is nowhere to be found. Le Monde refers to "sources close to the family". BBC first reported that HCB died on Monday, but now they only say he died "weeks short of his 96th birthday". - Karl Stas 10:14, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Le Monde has changed the date to August 3. Unfortunately, the web site of the HCB Foundation is unreachable and his bio on the Magnum site doesn't mention his death yet. Meanwhile, User:Simonides and User:194.51.20.124 have changed the date in the article, apparently without reading the talk page first. - Karl Stas 08:13, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

And it is not clear where he died: Isle-sur-la-Sorgue (Vaucluse) or in his house in Céreste. --Maha 13:02, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think we can now decide in favour of August 3 (time) and Céreste (place). - Karl Stas 16:59, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

For the record. I heard he was dead on August 4. Ericd 19:49, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)

No, he was buried that day. - Karl Stas 09:54, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

All the sources that I came across said "early morning Tuesday" ie 3 August, which may have been 2 August in America depending on the exact time (which I'm not aware of); since it was, apparently, Tuesday in France, we should retain 3 August until we have some evidence to the contrary. -- Simonides 05:29, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

At first, BBC and most French media said he died on Monday (local time). But the Magnum press release puts the time of death at Tuesday, 9:30am (local time). - Karl Stas 09:54, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Telephoto landscapes?

The current revision of the introductory paragraphs contains the following statement (emphasis added): Cartier-Bresson exclusively used Leica 35 mm rangefinder cameras equipped with normal 50mm lenses or occasionally a telephoto for landscapes. It strikes me as slightly unusual that he would have used a telephoto lens for landscapes. The conventional wisdom is that landscapes are best captured with normal or wide-angle lenses (of course, the conventional wisdom may very well be wrong). Is HCB's use of telephoto lenses a documented fact? MarkSweep 05:52, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Telephoto lenses can be used for landscape photography, but I don't know if HCB did this. A web search reveals the sentence was taken from Photo-Seminars.com. - Karl Stas 13:35, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Apologies for saving in the wrong language, instead of my own minority language. I was about to fix it when I found, to my pleasant surprise, it was already done. Thanks for your patience.Meabhar 21:00, 24 Sept, 2004 (UTC).

Copyright

Oops, very sorry, I have been so busy making edits to other articles that I missed the talk page on this. I'm also a Wikipedia (contributor) newbie. Again, my apologies, did not mean at all to ignore. I added the images previously but wasn't sure if they were fair use or not at the time. Speedoflight, October 2, 2005

All photos in this article are copyrighted! I think they should be removed, or is this considered "fair use"? - Karl Stas 09:32, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

• I've already marked the Magnum images {{ifd}}, but Speedoflight has not responded in any way. It's a shame -- Speedoflight is making great improvements to this article, but needs to pay some attention to talk pages. The images are explicitly NOT fair use. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 22:52, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

try contacting the foundation henri cartier-bresson who adminstrates his estate. they also have a good amount of photos of him (even on the top page). the prez of the foundation is the photographer who took the famous foto of him (the one you're using on top with the mirror) if im not mistaken. - would be good to confirm and credit her Martine Franck --Bine maya 06:47, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

• I cannot find any proof that the book, "The Decisive Moment" is not in the Public Domain in the U.S., as a renewal of the book is not listed the US Copyright Office, Public Catalog (1978 to present), nor in a reliable database of Class A U.S. Copyright renewals (book) renewal registrations for works published between 1923 and 1963. These renewals were received by the US Copyright Office between 1950 and 1993 --Zeamays 18:18, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Leica hype

I find modern autofocus cameras boring. I like to use manuals cameras and I definitely find rangefinders easier to use in alvailable light... But I'm getting bored by all this contributions by Leica fanatics.... Until the seventies Zeiss lenses where definitely superior... HCB favorite lens was a Zeiss Sonnar 50mm f/1.5 in Contax mount with a Leica adapter (now a very rare and expansive accessory). Both photos HCB that illustrate the article are showing a Contax lens mounted on a Leica with an adapter, probably the Sonnar. Ericd 00:06, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Leica M eventually? M1 or 2? -- max rspct leave a message 03:09, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

During his life he used various cameras I think he used mostly a M3. Ericd 08:48, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Brownie Camera Reference

To: 12.217.192.63 Hi: You removed a statement in the Henri Cartier Bresson page concerning the Brownie camera and pointed to a reference. Can you please a post a citation (footnote and reference note) to the exact journal, author, date, page, etc. Thanks. --speedoflight | talk to me 06:19, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Private life references from Martine Franck entry

i'm a great fan of HCB, but the gap between the tone of this article and that of Martine Franck his fellow-magnum photographer, wife and legacy administrator is (was!!) too striking not to notice the gender bias:he's a genius. she's his second wife. i've reivised her entry now but it was mostly about HIM (even grammatically) and about her wife- and motherhood --Bine maya 06:45, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Developing his own film?

The article is inconsistent about whether Cartier-Bresson developed his own film. The section "The middle years" states that he and his wife lived in "a large studio with a small bedroom and kitchen and a bathroom where Henri once developed his films." However, the section "Technique" states "He never developed or made his own prints." So ... how to reconcile these statements? -- Docether 18:03, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Link to probable copyvio

In this pair of edits, the reader is pointed to http://www.e-photobooks.com/cartier-bresson/decisive-moment.html.

Neither having nor wanting the requisite plug in, I can't view that. But that site's top page tells people that the site offers:

<h2>The Decisive Moment by Cartier-Bresson</h2> / <p>The complete book of The Decisive Moment by Henri Cartier-Bresson online in a Flash Image Story, showing all 126 images. The Decisive Moment is generally considered the most important photo book of the last century.

The Decisive Moment was, I believe, copyrighted by HCB, who died in 2004. That would mean it's copyright till at least 2054 in most of the world.

I'm therefore removing the link. If I've misunderstood, persuade me. -- Hoary 10:11, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Daughter adopted?

There seems to be a discrepancy between this page and Martine Franck's as to whether their daughter was adopted, and when. Mooveeguy 16:11, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Hcb.jpg

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BetacommandBot 04:45, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Henri Cartier-Bresson - no image manipulation???

There has been much said about HCB's images having no darkroom manipulation or cropping. The cropping part is probably right but his images >>have<< been manipulated "to get everything in the negative onto the print." I have seen several of his exhibits in Paris and some of the prints showed signs blatant burning/dodging.

For a printed example, see the photo of the women of Kashmir on the mountain top in the book "The Family of Man" pp. 156-157. The sky is heavily burned in, the woman on right obviously dodged.

For one, I never understood his stance on this issue and as a fervent HCB admirer it has bothered me no end. He employed the best darkroom technicians to bring out the genius of his work - it would have been sufficient to say - as Minor White has done - for technical detail: the camera was faithfully employed.

Leterrible358 (talk) 03:39, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Subjects

In light of the (potential) length of the section and WP:EMBED, it might be a good idea to split the "Notable subjects" into a dedicated list page. 86.41.91.196 (talk) 13:43, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

File:Photo cartierbresson europe.jpg Nominated for speedy Deletion

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Nice article

I just did a bit of copy editing (the easy part). But that is not meant as a criticism of the article. In fact I enjoyed reading it and appreciate the work that has gone into it. I now know something of Henri Cartier-Bresson! CPES (talk) 14:31, 27 October 2014 (UTC) (don't know what all that stuff below is. I can't delete it. Can anyone help)

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Cartier-Bresson the father of photojournalism?

Holland Cotter in The New York Times wrote that "Cartier-Bresson’s dematerialized working method, so focused on the shutter moment, set a model for modern photojournalism, a field he basically invented.". Ken Carbone in FastCompany quoted this and used it to justify a headline of "Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson: Father of Photojournalism". On 5 June 2015 User:Hoary removed the following from this: "Removing a daft claim that he was the first photojournalist, one been here for over a decade". FastCompany is not the best of sources on this matter. Today I reverted an edit that called him the father. This article currently states "He became inspired by a 1930 photograph by Hungarian photojournalist Martin Munkacsi..." (citation needed). Mark Oliver's obituary for him in The Guardian is titled "Father of photo-journalism, Cartier-Bresson, dies at 96" and goes on to claim he is "regarded as the founding father of photo-journalism". -Lopifalko (talk) 17:14, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Good edit, Lopifalko. I don't quite know what Fast Company is; but surely it's not a reliable source on photography or journalism. The conventional view is that photojournalism started off in the 1840s; one might define photojournalism restrictively and thereby give it a later start; but I don't know how anyone could deny that it was up and running well before Cartier-Bresson (HCB) was even born. The article in Fast Company is mediocre and I don't know why we're citing it, but to be fair to its author the article doesn't say that he was the father of photojournalism: only the title makes this extraordinary claim, and I suppose the title was applied by some editor ignoramus. Mark Oliver, author of the Guardian obituary, also doesn't seem to be an expert in this subject; his article is rather obviously incompetent, what with "founder of Magnum" (HCB was a founder of Magnum) and such gobbledygook as "But the unique sensibility his photographs, often black and white, has been compared by admirers to being as distinctive as the style of great cinema director." Theroadislong, please reconsider. -- Hoary (talk) 14:53, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Theroadislong, since I posted the message above, you've found time to make 25 (or so) edits elsewhere. Please find time to comment here, or to edit the article. -- Hoary (talk) 23:03, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

A couple of comments on Cotter's article: (i) "He was a founding member of the Magnum Photos cooperative in 1947." Yes, this gets it right. (By contrast, the Guardian article is unusually sloppy.) (ii) "Cartier-Bresson’s dematerialized working method, so focused on the shutter moment, set a model for modern photojournalism, a field he basically invented." I've now read this in context, and I still don't know what "dematerialized" means here. The method employed a camera and film. You could say that meant that there was less material than was used by photojournalists using medium format (then norm when he started), and he didn't use a tripod or flash; but miniaturization of equipment was a continuing process and earlier photographers such as Erich Salomon were renowned for their stealth. Perhaps HCB's lifestyle was unusually free of material trappings (I don't know offhand, but can easily believe this). I suspect that "dematerialized working method" is mere word salad here, tossed together unthinkingly in order to meet a deadline. And this makes me wary of attaching too much importance to what's said in this one article. -- Hoary (talk) 23:57, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Since we have been discussing this, highlighting the flaw in this claim in the article and in these newspaper articles, Theroadislong has bolstered the claim in the article with The Guardian's flawed source. Can I ask why please? -Lopifalko (talk) 05:03, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Lopifalko, since you last asked, Theroadislong has found time to make about forty edits to en:WP, none of them to this article or of course to its talk page. Perhaps Theroadislong has lost interest in this article. -- Hoary (talk) 22:29, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

OK I bow to your superior knowledge of the subject, I edit using reliable sources, if you don't consider them reliable feel free to remove the content. Theroadislong (talk) 22:41, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Thank you Theroadislong. -Lopifalko (talk) 19:49, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

IPHFM

Victpeterson, in this edit you say that photographs by HCB are in the collection of the IPHFM, and that this page says so. Where in that page does it say this? Moreover, HCB's name doesn't appear on this page of the same website, which is where I'd expect to see it. What am I missing? -- Hoary (talk) 04:44, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for catching this. The citation should be linked to this page https://iphf.org/inductees/henri-cartier-bresson/ . I will update this accordingly. Victpeterson (talk) 03:34, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Again, Victpeterson, you appear to be saying that the page iphf.org/inductees/henri-cartier-bresson/ says that photographs (presumably prints) by HCB are in the collection of IPHFM. I cannot find such an assertion within that page. Exactly where/how does the page say this? (If you give the wording, I can use Ctrl-F to find it within the page.) -- Hoary (talk) 05:16, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Cultural Perspective

I deliberately changed “as the city was falling to the communists” to “as the city was being liberated by the communists” in order to highlight the cultural bias in this paragraph. The word “fall” is normally associated with negative events. The word “liberated” is normally associated with positive events. In China, the events of 1949 are always referred to as “The Liberation”. Wikipedia is supposed to be a neutral encyclopaedia. Western writers of Wikipedia articles do not “own” the right to interpret events from a Western cultural viewpoint. Their interpretation is no more valid than a Chinese interpretation. By all means change the wording to something more neutral, but please do not insist on a biased Western cultural interpretation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Forsey (talk • contribs) 10:25, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Fall is neutral language, negative would be something like "subjugated" or "conquest." PS you seem to have been reverted. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:54, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Exhibition Henri Cartier-Bresson - Le grand jeu, BnF.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 21:38, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Retirement from photography?

Our article makes some pretty specific claims about Cartier-Bresson's retirement from photography: "Cartier-Bresson retired from photography in the early 1970s, and by 1975 no longer took pictures other than an occasional private portrait; he said he kept his camera in a safe at his house and rarely took it out." The only source in the paragraph is this Independent article, which only contains the much less specific claim, "...in the 1970s, as he reached retirement, he decided to devote his energies to drawing..."

This seems to have been added in this unsourced 2006 edit by Rossp (later banned for copyright violations).

The assertion seems to be disproven by a number of later photographs - this 1976 photo from Paris, this landscape of Newbiggin-by-the-Sea and this shot of Newcastle gravestones from 1978, and from 1979 this shot from Turkey and this from Switzerland. Possibly some of these could be misdated, but the date of the Newcastle and Newbiggin visit seems to be fairly well-established, and most do not seem to fit the description of "private portrait".

Does anyone know where our article's retirement narrative has come from, and can anyone source it or anything like it?

His International Center of Photography profile gives the much less specific assertion that "In 1966 he left Magnum, which remained his agent, and devoted himself to drawing" - I think everyone is agreed that he shifted his main energy to drawing in the late 1960s or 1970s, but our current assertion that he almost completely stopped taking photographs in 1975 seems both unsourced and essentially disproven. TSP (talk) 17:12, 28 August 2024 (UTC)