The Fondation’s conservation department regularly presents stand-alone images along the visitors’ journey through the space, telling the unique story behind them and thereby unravelling the life of the man who bears the name of the institution. These pearls embody the remarkable career of a 20th century man, steeped in literature and art, whose curiosity was only equalled by his freedom.
Many photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson are now part of the collective memory and have left a lasting impression due to their link with history, each individual appropriating and forming an attachment with the images depending on their own sensitivity and personal experience.
The collection of more than 30,000 original prints selected by the photographer has many surprises in store. Each new exhibition at the Fondation HCB will reveal rarely published photographs.
This programme is supported by the Gutenberg Agency.
Natcho Aguirre, Santa Clara, Mexico, 1934
Henri Cartier-Bresson is 26 years old. According to Peter Galassi, curator of an Henri Cartier-Bresson retrospective at the MoMA in New York, this is when he created “one of the most powerful photographs he’s ever taken”. “Cartier-Bresson usually found his collages, but at least twice, in Mexico, he helped to create them. Exploring a hacienda with his friend Ignacio Aguirre, Cartier-Bresson noticed an open cabinet with six pairs of shoes whose varied positions comprise an abbreviated catalogue of sexual permutations – it was made up of elegant, ladies’ white heels and one male intruder, a pair of dark, heavy boots.
Amid the chaos, Cartier-Bresson noticed a heart formed between two of the ladies’ shoes. He asked his friend to pose with arms crossed beside the box. Formally, the picture’s taut frame and geometric compartments, each neatly enclosing its contents, recall an early series of paintings by Magritte. But here the similarity ends, for Cartier-Bresson has replaced Magritte’s artificially banal illustrator’s style with the blunt, exacting realism of photography.”
Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
79 rue des Archives – 75003 Paris
