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Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908 – 2004)
Behind Saint-Lazare station, France, Paris, 1932
Item number 034-02999
In 1932, the year Cartier-Bresson began working with the Leica, he took his legendary “puddle jumper” behind the Saint-Lazare station in Paris. The man is captured at the exact moment before he touches the smooth surface of the water with his foot and thus would destroy the perfect reflection. The motif of reduplication, one of photography’s most pertinent metaphors, is not only found in the leaping man and his silhouetted replica figure, but appears several times and in complex inter-twinings in this masterful shot. At the decisive moment, Cartier-Bresson captured an enduringly convincing composition on his – by today’s standards astonishingly insensitive – film. He thus created a paradigmatic example of his photographic approach, as he explained it only twenty years later in his influential photo-book “Images a la Sauvette” (English edition: The decisive Moment).
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Gelatin silver print, print date: 1960s
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Image dimensions 55,2 x 39,2 cm (55,2 x 39,2 inch)
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Mounting, Framing framed 75 x 60 cm
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Condition
Double-white matte paper, early oversized exhibition print in excellent condition -
Annotations
Photographer’s stamp on the reverse -
Literature
Lincoln Kirstein / Beaumont Newhall (eds.), The Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1947, p. 24; Henri Cartier-Bresson, Images à la Sauvette, Paris 1952, pl. 26; Yves Bonnefoy (ed.), Henri Cartier-Bresson, Photographe, Paris 1979, pl. 14; Peter Galassi (ed.), Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Early Work, The Museum of Modern Art, New York 1987, p. 101; Vera Feyder / André Pieyre de Mandiargues / Henri Cartier-Bresson (eds.), Paris à vue d’oeil, Paris 1994, pl. 33; Jean-Pierre Montier (ed.), L’art sans art d’Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris 1995, p. 96; Henri Cartier-Bresson, De qui s’agit-il? Paris 2003, p. 59. -
Prints / Magnum / Schatten / Gewässer / Stadt /