An Inner Silence: The Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson

The photographs are absolutely AMAZING!! Love the attention to composition and the way the character of the subject comes through with each one!

This was a gift for my best friend and she loved it. The book has a lot of pictures..more pictures than words actually, it has a short intro with a great explanation of the pics, but overall it's all his greatest photographs...loved it

Published to coincide with the opening in 2003 of the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson, which was created to house permanently the artist's collected works, AN INNER SILENCE is a joy to behold. There are 95 photographs reproduced here along with a self-portrait sketch of Cartier-Bresson and a quotation by him. Both curator Agnes Sire and philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy have written insightful, informative essays to accompany the photographs. Sire reminds us that the artist disliked being photographed-- ("Perhaps he felt the falseness of the situation")-- and tht he liked to work quickly, in the photographer's own words, to "'bite like a mosquito,'" in order to capture the inner silence of the subject. But now to the photographs. There are shots here seen around the world of famous people: Marilyn Monroe, Martin Luther King, Jean Genet, Christian Dior (one of my favorites), Francis Bacon, Roland Barthes (fantastic photograph), a very young and pensive Carson McCullers. William Faulkner (another favorite), Henri Matisse, a very youthful and handsome John Huston, Truman Capote, Albert Camus et al. What is so amazing, however, about these photographs is that the shots of strangers are just as intriguing and engage the viewer as much as the images of the rich and/or famous or both. For example, "Mexico" (p. 49), "Jewish ghetto, Warsaw" (p. 47), "Egypt" (p. 39), "Paris" (p. 81), "Zurich" (p. 105), and "Los Angeles" (p. 107). I for one would like to know more about this young couple. These photographs, like all great art, invite us to view them again and again. Shot in gorgeous available natural light, they remind us of just how harsh and often pedestrian flash photography can be. Sire closes her essay by saying that "an exhibition of these encounters would not only be one more tribute to his talent [Cartier-Bresson], as a photographer, but more importantly, would allow many aspects of his being to shine, like so many firefires in a field, because the gaze of these portraits is his gaze, linked by the thread of the other." Beautifully spoken.

As you browse the millions of photos available on Flickr and other web photo sharing sites, it is apparent that most people wielding a camera do not - cannot - aspire to the special talent of Henri Cartier-Bresson. Renowned for capturing the "decisive moment," Cartier-Bresson was also a highly skilled portraitist. Ninety-seven of his portraints appear here accompanied by one mercifully short essay by Agnes Sire and a pretentious attempt at intepretating HCB by Jean-Luc Nancy. ("What HCB gave his subjects was an air, an aura, an allure; these portraits convery a manner, a disposition, a habitus, an ethos, a mood, a grace and a favour, a gaze and a gift; the gift he has given to them.") Surprisingly, many of the portraits are formulaic, though this does not detract from their striking nature. A 1966 picture, titled simply "Zurich" embodies Cartier-Bresson's skills as a portraitist and the capturer of the "decisive moment". A wizened, old man in a three-piece suit carrying a briefcase is captured in mid-step . . . the gnome of Zurich. A portrait of Joan Miro captures, if not parodies, the stylized eye motif of his famous paintings. His portrait of Marilyn Monroe, on the other hand, simply captures a beautful woman but with none of the sensuality that Bert Stern and so many others caught. Perhaps Cartier-Bresson saw only a beautiful woman? While I browsed, I wondered how much of the effect of these portraits depended on knowing the subects (i.e., Truman Capote, Samuel Becket and others who may be increasingly forgotten today), but then I happened upon "Vicksburg," a 1970s shot of an anonymous black woman. That one shot alone establishes that Cartier-Bresson's unique photographic vision will leave on long after all of his famous subjects are forgotten. Jerry

I am in love with HCB! This book is so beautiful, every picture is amazing. If you are a fan of portraiture this is a must! If you are a fan of HCB and you don't have a book of his yet, this is a beautiful edition to start with. It has all of his famous portraits including some that were not previously published. They are full page and on nice thick paper.