高中(學測,指考)◆英文題庫下載題庫

       Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) is one of the most original and influential figures in the history of photography. His humane, spontaneous photographs helped establish photojournalism as an art form. 

       Cartier-Bresson’s family was wealthy—his father made a fortune as a textile manufacturer—but Cartier-Bresson later joked that due to his parents’ frugal ways, it often seemed as though his family was poor. 

       Educated in Paris, Cartier-Bresson developed an early love for literature and the arts. As a teenager, Cartier-Bresson rebelled against his parents’ formal ways of education. In his early adulthood, he even drifted toward communism. But it was art that remained at the center of his life. 

       Cartier-Bresson traveled to Africa in 1931 to hunt antelope and boar. And Africa fueled another interest in him: photography. He then wandered around the world with his camera, using a handheld camera to catch images from fleeting moments of everyday life. 

        Not long after World War II, Cartier-Bresson traveled east, spending considerable time in India, where he met and photographed Gandhi shortly before his assassination in 1948. Cartier-Bresson’s subsequent work to document Gandhi’s death and its immediate impact on the country became one of Life Magazine’s most prized photo essays. 

        Cartier-Bresson’s approach to photography remained much the same throughout his life. He made clear his dislike of images that had been improved by artificial light, darkroom effects, and even cropping. The naturalist in Cartier-Bresson believed that all editing should be done when the photo is taken. In 1952, his first book, The Decisive Moment, a rich collection of his work spanning two decades, was published. “There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment,” he said. In 1968, he began to turn away from photography and returned to his passion for drawing and painting.