Cartier-Bresson Photography Analysis

Superior Essays
There seem to be three major components to the art of photography: the subject, the photographer, and the audience. The subject must simply exist while the photographer captures its presence, documenting its significance by determining the way the photograph is taken; this process includes endless aspects that are adjusted to the photographer’s liking, such as exposure, framing, lighting, and so on and so forth. These two components work together to create an image. The only “job” of the audience is to interpret, criticize, and possible appreciate this image. In order to understand the photograph’s meaning, one must comprehend the significance of the subject, the intentions of the photographer, and the relationship the two share. This task …show more content…
There, he began to establish photojournalism as an art, until he met Paul Strand, another photographer now experimenting with film. Inspired, Cartier-Bresson left photography completely in order to pursue this newly found interest. He humbly worked under filmmaker Jean Renoir as an assistant and helped in created some of Renoir’s feature films. Yet, Cartier-Bresson craved presenting actual stories about reality, an interest better practiced in documentary style, but his inspiration was interrupted in 1940 when the Germans invaded France. Being a man of his country, he rejoined the Army, but was captured and forced into a prison-of-war camp for three years. Finally, he escaped from the imprisonment and immediately returned to photography and film. Once he created the photo department for the French resistance, Cartier-Bresson was hired by the United States to make a documentary of French prisoners returning …show more content…
He documented the Spanish Civil War, the Chinese revolution, George VI’s coronation, and Khrushchev’s Russia. He also published in many magazines, such as Life, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue, and had many different clients, such as Che Guevara and Marilyn Monroe. However, Cartier-Bresson later abandoned Magnum in 1966 to return to drawing and painting, exhibiting the quality of appreciating more than luxury, wealth, and fame. He refused to even acknowledge his past career in photography but still helped preserve his works until his death in 2004. Due to his larger-than-life goal of depicting the greatness of reality, Cartier-Bresson is considered a major artist of the 20th

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