It is a known fact that Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) hated being photographed. There are several images showing the photographer standing beside him with his hand in front of his face, desperately trying to hide. The director of the foundation dedicated to him, Clément Chéroux, mischievously admits that he had “played with a taboo” by deciding to punctuate with portraits of the photographer at all ages the retrospective he is dedicating to Landerneau (Finistère), at the Edouard and Hélène Leclerc Fund. He specifies: “Henri Cartier Bresson refused to be photographed from the 1950s, and especially from the 1960s, in order to remain anonymous and photograph more freely. But he was not always resilient. In the 1930s he even made self-portraits. »
For this first retrospective in Brittany, Clément Chéroux divided the work into twenty-three sections and introduced each with a portrait of the artist, “to show that it’s not always the same person who takes the picture. There were several Cartier-Bressons: the surrealist, the photojournalist, the observer of consumer society… It was important to embody him, and to see him in his old age. »
And the kaleidoscopic exposure idea works. The twenty-three portraits punctuate as many small thematic and chronological chapters with refined scenography: surrealism, trips to the United States, reports in India or the USSR… In the in-depth retrospective presented at the Center Pompidou in Paris in 2014, when he was director of the department of photography, Clément Chéroux had sought to shed light on the photographer’s blind spots, accumulating original materials, letters and documents.
“The Decisive Moment”
For this exhibition in Brittany, he focused more on the work, with 300 vintage prints, including all the icons, plus some little-known photographs. The curator had the good idea to associate several films, including The returnmade in 1945 by Cartier-Bresson, about prisoners and deportees returning home after the war. Another by Gjon Mili (1904-1984) completes the photographer’s portraits by showing, somewhat rarely, the unassuming Cartier-Bresson in full action in 1956: nimble and light, spinning around his subject.
Each mini-chapter exposes, as needed, the astonishing virtuosity of the photographer. The first three, dedicated to the beginning of his career influenced by his studies in painting and surrealism, establish his style, the famous “decisive moment” – a synthesis of rigor and intuition. “From the beginning, what’s extraordinary about him is the juxtaposition of something very controlled, geometric, and something very freeassures Clément Chéroux. He says he doesn’t calculate: his unconscious has recognized something and presses the button. »
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