This is the sweetest email of the week. It comes to us from Bertrand Bonnefoy:
Hello,
I met the son of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s optician and did a short interview. – Bertrand Bonnefoy
“I knew Henri Cartier-Bresson. I knew him mainly between 1964 and 1984, because my father, Jacques Jabot, was his optician. He ran an optician’s shop at 3 rue Saint-Roch. My father lived in that neighborhood for fifty years.
Cartier-Bresson often lost his glasses. So he came regularly to see my father. They knew each other for about fifty years. Henri lived around the corner. I have memories from between the ages of 10 and 30: on Saturday mornings, Henri would chat with my father about vision, prescription, optics… He was there, with his small camera around his neck, another one often in his pocket, a piercing gaze, not very tall, always calm. They didn’t talk much, but they got along well.
What’s also interesting is the connection between his work and that of the optician. My father had studied optics at the school, but also photography. He was one of the first to offer well-designed progressive lenses. Since he was also trained in photography, he knew what a sharp image was. On the other hand, he hated photos with backlighting. He couldn’t stand it.
Photographing what I see in public spaces!
“I remember around 1973, I went out with him to the Tuileries Gardens. It happened to be an open-air fashion show, where wedding dresses were being presented. True to his instinct, he took out his camera to capture a few shots. But one of the organizers attacked him, accusing him of photographing the creations without permission.
Henri remained calm but firm. He replied something like, ‘It’s my job; I do it all over the world. You’re not the one who’s going to stop me from photographing what I see in public spaces.'”
Cartier-Bresson’s drawings are close to my sensitivity to the “instant.” He created sketchbooks, mainly of landscapes, drawn quickly from life, much like Eugène Fromentin’s sketches. This approach, both spontaneous and attentive, echoes his photography, which focuses on the decisive moment. The common idea: to capture the truth of a scene in its fleetingness, without staging or artifice.
Interview and image by Bertrand Bonnefoy
