Henri Cartier-Bresson - Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Eye of the Century New York Tuesday, December 12, 2017 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist

  • Literature

    Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment, pl. 78
    Cartier-Bresson, The World of Henri Cartier-Bresson, pl. 157
    Montier, Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art, pl. 133
    Thames & Hudson, Henri Cartier-Bresson: In India, pl. 31, there captioned Women in purdah outside the mosque on the hill of the Hari Parbat fort, Srinagar.

  • Catalogue Essay

    Henri Cartier-Bresson first traveled to India in December 1947, taking a 6,888 nautical mile journey by sea from England. Upon arriving, he encountered a newly independent nation whose people were experiencing mounting tensions due to the religiously based partition of India and Pakistan. Amidst this conflict, Cartier-Bresson captured one of his best known images, Srinagar, Kashmir, 1948, (lot 73), which depicts Muslim women praying on Hari Parbal Hill, with the rising sun illuminating the Himalayas.

    Most notably, in January 1948, Cartier-Bresson met with Mahatma Gandhi and documented the ceremonial breaking of a six day fast that Gandhi undertook as a call to restore peace. Only ninety minutes after their meeting on January 30, Gandhi was assassinated, and Cartier-Bresson, with his Leica camera, became a witness to history, capturing the immediate sorrow and subsequent proceedings for Gandhi’s cremation and the scattering of his ashes. The nationwide mourning is evocatively rendered in a depiction of Gandhi’s funeral pyre (lot 75). This coverage of Gandhi’s final days catapulted Cartier-Bresson’s status as a premier photojournalist, increasing demand for his pictures from leading publications including LIFE, Harper’s Bazaar, Now, and The New York Times Magazine. Over the course of the next 40 years, Cartier-Bresson continued to return to India, traveling there six times through 1987.

  • Artist Biography

    Henri Cartier-Bresson

    French • 1908 - 2004

    Candidly capturing fleeting moments of beauty among the seemingly ordinary happenings of daily life, Henri Cartier-Bresson's work is intuitive and observational. Initially influenced by the Surrealists' "aimless walks of discovery," he began shooting on his Leica while traveling through Europe in 1932, revealing the hidden drama and idiosyncrasy in the everyday and mundane. The hand-held Leica allowed him ease of movement while attracting minimal notice as he wandered in foreign lands, taking images that matched his bohemian spontaneity with his painterly sense of composition.

    Cartier-Bresson did not plan or arrange his photographs. His practice was to release the shutter at the moment his instincts told him the scene before him was in perfect balance. This he later famously titled "the decisive moment" — a concept that would influence photographers throughout the twentieth century. 

    View More Works

79

Women at the Mahdum Shah Ziarat mosque, Srinagar, Kashmir

1948
Gelatin silver print, printed later.
17 5/8 x 11 3/4 in. (44.8 x 29.8 cm)
Signed in ink and copyright credit blindstamp in the margin.

Estimate
$7,000 - 9,000 

Sold for $15,000

Contact Specialist
Rachel Peart
Specialist, Head of Sale
+1 212 940 1246

Sarah Krueger
Head of Department, Photographs

General Enquiries:
+1 212 940 1245 photographs@phillips.com

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Eye of the Century

New York Auction 12 December 2017