Research 10 - Henri Cartier Bresson

Born in 1908 Henri Cartier Bresson is French and photographed famous people and ordinary people whom he chose because of their striking and unusual features (quote from An Inner Silience: The Portraits of Henri Cartier- Bresson).  He said "Above all i look for an inner silence.  I seek to translate the personality and not an expression".    Looking through these photographs, I feel they show a lot of quite gloomy, depressed and miserable people.  Only a few people look happy or relaxed.   I wonder if indeed this was the personality of these people as he had tried to capture.   They are all black and white given the time of photography; the portraits overall place the subject in the bottom two third of the picture.  On further investigation though some of his other work not in this book is uplifting and makes you go wow like the photograph below of a young boy in Paris carrying two bottles of wine.  He is so proud with his head held high.  The children behind him looking at him (or is at the photographer!).   His stick thin legs look so delicate.

Another of his photographs is taken in a prisoner of war camp in Dessau in 1945 - titled Dessau, Germany.   I have read it is the moment when a prisioner of war meets the woman who "denounced" her and brought her to the camp.  before I knew this and I had just looked at a picture I thought it could be a scene from a film with the way the prison is protuding her chest out and almost shaking it in a comical way.  However it is not comical, but a very tragic scene.  The guard who had denounced her has a look of a naughty child pouting who is about to be told off.  The faces of the other prisoners have different expressions : the man in the striped pyjamas hands on hips, others craning their necks for a look and the man sitting down who has no expression whatsoever his eyes covered up with glasses.  The photograph is clearly black and white given the date it was taken and it was a gelatine silver print size 17 x 24 cms. 

Photograph copied from site below:

http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/photographs/dessau_germany_henri_cartier_bresson/objectview_enlarge.aspx?page=544&sort=0&sortdir=asc&keyword=&fp=1&dd1=19&dd2=0&vw=1&collID=19&OID=190016994&vT=1&hi=0&ov=0

Together with Robert Capa, David Seymour and William Vandivert, George Rodger, he formed Magnum group which was a co-operative photograph agency owned by all of them.  This group assigned each of its photographers to different parts of the world and Cartier Bresson' was assigned to India and China.  Whilst in India he photographed Ghandi's funeral.