A kaleidoscopic portrait of Henri Cartier-Bresson in Landerneau – Technologist

It’s well known that Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) hated being photographed. There are several images that show the photographer exasperatedly trying his hardest to hide behind the hand he holds in front of his face. Clément Chéroux, the director of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson dedicated to the photographer admitted that, for the retrospective of Cartier-Bresson’s work at the Fonds Edouard et Hélène Leclerc in Landerneau, Finistère, he had mischievously “trifled with a taboo” when he decided to feature portraits of the photographer at every age. “From the 1950s, and even more so in the 1960s, Henri Cartier Bresson refused to be photographed, in order to remain anonymous and to photograph more freely. But he wasn’t always so resistant. In the 1930s, he even took self-portraits.”

For the photographer’s first retrospective to be held in Brittany, Clément Chéroux has divided the work into twenty-three sections, introducing each with a portrait of the artist, “to show that it’s not always the same person taking the photo. There have been several Cartier-Bressons: the surrealist, the photojournalist and the observer of a consumer society. It was important to embody him, and to watch him as he aged.”

And the concept of a kaleidoscopic exhibition has worked. The twenty-three portraits combine a number of small, thematic and chronological chapters with pared-down scenography: Surrealism, travels in the US and photoreports of India and the USSR. For the in-depth retrospective held in 2014 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Chéroux, who was then the director of the photography department, sought to shed light on the photographer’s blind spots, by accumulating unpublished material, letters and documents.

The ‘decisive moment’

For the exhibition in Brittany, the curator has taken a more classic approach to the photographer’s work and presents 300 vintage prints that include the most iconic photos as a well as a handful of little-known images. He also had the right idea of including several films directed by Cartier-Bresson such as Le Retour (1945), about prisoners of war and deportees returning home after the war. Another photo taken by Gjon Mili (1904-1984) completes the rare number of portraits of the photographer and shows the camera-shy Cartier-Bresson in 1956 at work – whirling nimbly and light-footed around his subject.

Each mini chapter exposes the photographer’s astonishing virtuosity. The first three are devoted to the beginning of his photographic career, influenced by his painting studies and by Surrealism, which established his style, the famous “decisive moment” that synthesizes discipline and intuition. “What is extraordinary about him, right from the start, is the combination of mathematical control and something very free,” said Chéroux “He said that he didn’t calculate, but that his subconscious would recognize something, and he would press the button.”

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