Henri Cartier-Bresson

© Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, Courtesy Peter Fetterman Gallery

The artist in 1930

© Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum photos, Collection Fondation HBC

Henri Matisse Pierre Bonnard Andre Breton Robert Capa R Rodger Georges Braque Matisse Painting Stolen by the Nazis to Be Returned Dealer Arrested for Selling Forgeries

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

Although Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) epitomized the adventurous, itinerant photojournalist, he was also, by inclination and training, an artist. From the 1930s through the ’50s, the French photographer captured some of the most important political and historical developments of the time, from the liberation of Paris to the collapse of the Nationalist regime in China. But the lyricism and poetry of such images as Seville, 1933—a remarkable picture of children playing, one of them on crutches, viewed through a bombed-out wall—transcend their documentary function. The Decisive Moment, the title of the English edition of his first book of photographs, published in 1952, reflects Cartier-Bresson’s almost uncanny ability to shoot an event at precisely the instant when the formal elements fell beautifully into place. This talent is evident in one of his best-known pictures, Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, 1932, of a man caught in midair as he jumps over a puddle, his reflection his perfect double. “He’s the master of street photography,” says the New York dealer Howard Greenberg, “and that’s a style of work that he was the first to make into real art.”

The son of a wealthy textile manufacturer, Cartier-Bresson studied painting and traveled in the same Parisian circles as André Breton, soaking up the freespirited ethos of Surrealism. He acquired his first camera, a Leica, in 1931 and, a few years later, in 1935, exhibited his photographs at the influential Julien Levy Gallery, in New York. “Immediately, he was being accepted within a high-art context,” says Philippe Garner, the international head of photographs at Christie’s.

Earlier this year—the centenary of his birth—a record for his work was set when a gelatin silver print of Hyères, France, 1932, sold at Christie’s New York for $265,000, well above its high estimate of $90,000. The image is classic Cartier-Bresson: a shot of a bicyclist taken from the top of a steep spiral staircase, creating a complex geometry of lines and planes. “That was a highly desirable, beautiful print,” says Garner. “But I don’t expect it to last too long as a record. There are works out there that could easily make more.” Greenberg agrees that the market has plenty of room to grow. He has sold vintage Cartier-Bresson prints for between $100,000 and $200,000 but comments, “I think the bar is now higher than that for the best ones.”

Cartier-Bresson’s best-known pictures, generally from the 1930s and ’40s, are icons in the history of photography. In addition to Hyères, France, his notable works include On the Banks of the Marne, 1938, a view of French couples picnicking on the riverbank, and Valencia, 1933, an impressive feat of composition and timing that shows a man looking through the opening of a sliding door inside a bullfight arena, one of his spectacles’ lenses turned into a perfect, opaque circle by reflected light. Prices for top-quality vintage prints of these images have climbed steadily in the past several years: In October of 2004, for example, a print of Valencia sold for $78,000 at Sotheby’s New York, the highest sum paid so far at auction for that work.

The photographer’s auction record before the sale of Hyères, France was also set at Christie’s New York, where, in February 2007, a signed gelatin silver vintage print of Italy, 1933, brought $204,000. A gelatin silver print of On the Banks of the Marne went for $132,000 at Christie’s New York in October 2005. And in October 2006, a signed print of Cuba, 1934, fetched $102,000 at Phillips de Pury & Company. “It’s getting more difficult to find prints,” notes the Paris dealer Agathe Gaillard.

Cartier-Bresson was drafted shortly after World War II broke out and, in 1940, was captured by the Germans. He managed to escape from a prison camp and returned to Paris, where he joined the Resistance. While hiding out from and fighting the occupiers, he took documentary photographs as well as portraits of some of the most famous artists and writers of the time, including Georges Braque, Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse. The portraits, although among the best-known images of these personalities, are generally less sought after, and thus less expensive, than his street photography. A late print of Henri Matisse, Vence, France, 1944, for example, brought just $6,000 at Bonhams & Butterfields, in San Francisco, in May. Some, however, bring considerably more than that: A signed 1938 print of Alberto Giacometti working in his Paris studio sold at Phillips in New York in April 2006 for $38,400.