Cartier-Bresson was born in Chanteloup-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne in 1908. He developed a strong fascination with painting early on in his life, particularly with the subjects of Surrealism and Cubism. His camera of choice became the Leica, after spending a year in the Ivory Coast in 1932. After this moment, he began his life-long passion for photography. He created the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris in 2003 for the preservation of his work. Over his lifetime, he received an extraordinary number of prizes, awards, and honorary doctorates.

One of the main features of Cartier-Bresson’s work is “shadow play.” Shadows are areas that lack light; photography itself is all about painting with light, and you can’t have light without dark. Shadows can add another layer to our images, even creating two scenes within one frame by overlaying shapes and textures over any other given scene. An example of this is the below image of Cartier-Bresson’s, where what appears to be the shadow of a mosque is cast on the wall of another building. This adds religious connotation to the image which otherwise wouldn’t be there.

“While other photographers work around shadows, Cartier-Bresson uses them as little jokes, surrealist tools, and moveable backdrops to transform ordinary street scenes into photographs that make us wonder “How come I did not see that?”

GREECE. Cyclades. Island of Siphnos. 1961.

FRANCE. Paris. The Palais Royal Gardens. 1959.

CHINA. Beijing. Final days of the Kuomintang. A peasant, whose market has closed down and came to Beijing to sell his vegetables, sits to eat his provisions. A shopkeeper resigns to have nothing more to sell in his store. December 1948. Since July 1946, China has been torn apart by civil war between the Communist forces of MAO TSE-TUNG and the Nationalist forces (Kuomintang) of General TCHANG KAI CHEK. Slowly the Communist gained terrain and in December of 1948 they took siege of Peking.