Europeans - Hardcover

Cartier-Bresson, Henri

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0821225227 ISBN 13: 9780821225226

Publisher: Bulfinch, 1998

Synopsis

Henri Cartier-Bresson published a photographic collection entitled The Europeans in 1955, a portrait of the postwar continent whose occupants lived among ruins and still bore the mark of hunger. In this new volume of images spanning a period from the late 1920s to the 1970s, the celebrated photographer has surveyed a region whose separate parts have, over the years, begun to take on a "family likeness." Documenting the face of Europe at a time when the boundaries between individual countries appeared to be breaking down, Cartier-Bresson traveled from the Scandinavian shield to the Yugoslavian korst, from the Breton granites to the Irish bogs, scorning frontiers and customs posts and finding fragments of a greater identity that defied the sometimes dangerous pursuit of nationalism.
The unity and compassion of his eye are imposed on the infinite diversity of cultures, on the complexity of hills and valleys, on the variety of fields and foliage, and on the jumble of roads and rivers. In both countryside and city, people inhabit the landscape, sometimes alone, a face, a single gaze, but often couples, twin figures, mirrored individuals, linked solitudes. These photographs speak of the same daily ceremony, of the sweet and painful doggedness of people in the ongoing business of living, whether English opera-goers in formal evening wear, Polish priests in alb or cassock, or Abruzzi peasants shrouded in the black of their cloaks and hats.

About this title

Review:

Henri Cartier-Bresson's amazing feat as a photographer is the ability to follow his heart and the keen vision of his mind and eye in each photograph. His subjects are only part of the image in the viewfinder, whose composition he sometimes arranges with geometric precision. Many of his best photographs also have startlingly broad political and sociological connotations, which gives the ordinary subjects extraordinary dignity, even grandeur. Europeans is filled with these images, which are often visually complex as well: a 1952 picture depicts a poor immigrant tilling hard ground while in the distance the prosperity-propelled factories of industry belch smoke into already smoggy skies. This is not just a picture of a poor man, or industrial power, or the contrast between the two. It's an open question about the meaning of life, with an anonymous no one--just another human being--at its center. Another wonderful image in this collection is a 1954 shot of a handsome soldier ogling two pretty women. It shows that even at the bleakest moments in their social history, Muscovites were not immune to pheromonal persuasion.

About the Author:

Henri Cartier-Bresson is one of this century's leading photographers and his career has profoundly influenced the field. His earliest images are of Europe in the 1930s and 40s; he later traveled throughout the world -- to the United States, India, Japan, China, Mexico, the Soviet Union -- to frame the world with his camera.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bulfinch
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0821225227
• ISBN 13: 9780821225226
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 232