In the first exhibition of its kind in Switzerland, the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich is holding a comprehensive retrospective for Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the worlds most influential and renowned photographers.
Who? The Museum für Gestaltung Zürich is currently holding a comprehensive retrospective of the late French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. In a journalistic career that was witness to some of the key events of the 20th century, Cartier-Bresson travelled worldwide, taking photos singular for their humanity and power. As co-founder of the Magnum Agency in 1947, he established a comprehensive system that not only disseminated photos to front pages around the world, but established the photographer’s control over their pictures. Lauded as the father of modern photojournalism, this retrospective serves to highlight the fundamental role the innovations he wrought still play today.
What? The exhibition spans the entire photographic oeuvre of the photographer; from his time in Spain during the Civil War, his early films with Jean Renoir, to his coverage of seminal world events such as the death of Ghandi and the inception of the Maoist People’s Republic. Laid out chronologically, the visitor is able to follow the unravelling and consolidation of Cartier-Bresson’s style, as he rebels against the static school of his early instructors and throws himself instead out into the street, onto the frontier of real life. In addition, the images are placed within the context of the political, cultural and journalistic influences that informed and moulded the photographer and his many successors.
Why? Indisputably one of the most important photographers in history, the exhibition records the range and variety of Cartier-Bresson’s work, as well as his role in redefining the position of the photojournalist, and their rights over the integrity of their images. In its scope, this exhibition stands as a record of Cartier-Bresson’s fusion of the political and the creative aesthetic in a single image. "Photography", he said, "is simultaneously and instantaneously the recognition of a fact and the rigorous organisation of visually perceived forms that express and signify that fact." This exhibition stands testament to the success of his ambition, and provides three hundred vignettes of life at its most extreme, beautiful and thought provoking.
Henri Cartier-Bresson is at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich until 24 July 2011.
Text by Tish Wrigley
