Of high-bourgeois origins, Henri Cartier-Bresson (Chanteloup, 1908 — Montjustin, 2004) approached art at a very young age, attending the atelier of the painter Jacques-Emile Blanche where he came into contact with the environments of surrealism. Between 1927 and 1928 he was a student of André Lhote, a painter and theorist of Cubism.
At the end of the 1920s he left for the Ivory Coast where he took his first photographs. In 1931, he was able to appreciate some shots by Martin Munkacsi in Marseille, with which he was so impressed that he convinced himself to take up the profession of photographer. He buys the first Leica — a small and discreet 35 mm camera — and goes with some friends on a long trip to Europe, during which he comes to Italy for the first time. Soon after, he went to the United States where he exhibited with Walker Evans at the Julian Levy gallery in New York.
In 1933 he was in Mexico, following an expedition of ethnographers: he exhibited his work at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico, together with Manuel Alvarez Bravo.
He studied cinema with Paul Strand and became Jean Renoir's assistant director. During the Spanish war, a documentary was shot on hospitals in Republican Spain and one for the Red Cross.
Back in France, he published his photographs on the pages of “Ce Soir”, a pro-communist newspaper directed by Louis Aragon. In 1937 he married Javanese dancer Ratna Mohini.
A prisoner of the Nazis from 1940 to 1943, after a few attempts he manages to escape and becomes part of the French Resistance. Back in Paris, he photographs the liberation of the city and discovers that all his friends have been deported to the Buchenwald death camp. Presumed missing, the MoMA in New York dedicates a retrospective exhibition to him. Meanwhile, he collaborates in the production of a documentary on the return of prisoners of war produced by the American army, and portrays the artists Matisse, Picasso, Braque, Bonnard, Claudel and Rouault.
Between 1946 and 1947 he worked in the United States and collaborated with the magazine “Harper's Bazaar”.
In April 1947, together with Robert Capa, David Seymour (Chim), George Rodger, William and Rita Vandivert, he founded Magnum Photos, the world's first photographic agency.
Between 1948 and 1950 he lived and worked in the Far East: India, Pakistan, China and Indochina. Photograph Gandhi half an hour before his assassination, the birth of the People's Republic of China and the Indonesian Republic, reports that will be published by “Paris Match”.
In 1952, thanks to his publisher friend Tériade, he published his first photographic book “Images a Sauvette”, with the cover of Matisse, containing a text entitled “The Decisive Instant”, in which he exposes one of his many theoretical reflections on photography. Three years later, the same publisher will publish 'Les Européens', with the cover of Mirò.
Between 1951 and 1973, he made numerous trips to Italy. In the summer of 1962, the international magazine “Vogue” commissioned him to write a report on Sardinia, where he spent about twenty days. He immortalizes people discreetly and without forcing, preferring to the nascent and elitist Costa Smeralda, as indeed it had been for the Peninsula, the places of tradition: Mamoiada, San Leonardo di Siete Fuentes, Orosei, Cala Gonone, Orgosolo, Orani — guest of his friend Costantino Nivola —, Desulo, Oliena, Nuoro and Cagliari.
After a short period spent in China, in 1963 he left for Cuba, at the invitation of the American magazine “Life”, which, due to the embargo, was forced to contact a foreign photographer.
In the following years, trips followed one another: India, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and his works are published regularly on 'Life' and 'Paris Match'.
In 1966 he permanently abandoned Magnum, which in any case will retain ownership of his images. In 1967 he separated from his first wife and some time later he married Martine Franck, a Magnum reporter, with whom he will have a daughter, Mélanie.
Starting in the 70s he dedicated himself to drawing, reserving his shots almost exclusively to family and friends; the editorial production on his activity intensified and a series of retrospective exhibitions were set up that will go around the world.
In 2000, together with his daughter and wife, he inaugurated the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation.
On August 4, 2004, after a funeral, the family announced his death: the last choice of confidentiality for a man who has lived his entire life in this way.