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>>> 24.07.2019

“CHINE 1948-49 I 1958” AT THE HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON FOUNDATION IN PARIS FROM 15 OCT TO 2 FEB

About

From 9 October 2019 to 2 February 2020 
 
79 rue des Archives
75003 Paris 
 
Tuesday to Sunday: 11am – 7pm 
 
Full price 9 € / Reduced price 5 € 


Main image 
© Henri Cartier-Bresson
 
Image above
© Henri Cartier-Bresson
The Henri Cartier Foundation presents in new exhibition, "Chine 1948-1949 I 1958", from 15 October 2019 to 2 February 2020.  
 

On 25 November 1948, Henri Cartier-Bresson was commissioned by Life magazine to shoot a story on the “last days of Beijing” before the arrival of the Maoist troops. Having gone for two weeks, he would stay for ten months, mainly in the Shanghai area, witnessing the fall of the city of Nanjing held by Kuomintang, then forced to stay in Shanghai under Communist control for four months, leaving China a few days before the

proclamation of the People’s Republic of China (1 October 1949).

 

As the months went by, his accounts of “traditional” lifestyles and the establishment of a new order (Beijing, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai), produced with complete freedom of action, met with great success in Life and top international news magazines (including Paris Match, which had just been founded).

 

This long stay in China proved to be a seminal moment in the history of photojournalism: this reportage series came at the beginning of the Magnum Photos agency, which Henri Cartier-Bresson had co-founded eighteen months earlier in New York, and brought a new, less event-based, more poetic and detached style, attentive as much to the people as to the balance of the composition. A great many of these photos remain among the most famous in photography (such as “Gold Rush in Shanghai”).
 

One of the repercussions of “China 1948-1949” was that, from the fifties onwards, Henri Cartier-Bresson became a major benchmark in “new” photojournalism and the renaissance of photography in general. The books The Decisive Moment (Verve, 1952) and D’une Chine à l’autre (Delpire, 1954), prefaced by Jean-Paul Sartre, confirmed this supremacy.

 

In 1958, as the tenth anniversary drew near, Henri Cartier-Bresson set off again on a journey of discovery, yet under completely different conditions: constrained by an accompanying guide for four months, he travelled thousands of kilometres on the launch of the “Great Leap Forward” to report on the results of the Revolution and the forced industrialisation of rural areas. He nonetheless succeeded in also showing the least

positive aspects, such as the exploitation of human labour and the hold of the militias. Once again, the report met with international success.

 

The exhibition at the Fondation HCB brings together 114 original prints from 1948-1949, 40 prints from 1958, and many archive documents.
 
 
Commissioner: Michel Frizot, Ying-lung Su 
Artistic Director: Agnès Sire 
Curator of the Collections: Aude Raimbault 
 
 
"Chine 1948-1949 I 1958" Exhibition
From 15 October 2019 to 2 February 2020 
79 rue des Archives
Tuesday to Sunday: 11am – 7pm 
Full price 9 € / Reduced price 5 € 
henricartierbresson.org 

 


Main image 
© Henri Cartier-Bresson
 
Image above
© Henri Cartier-Bresson

About

From 9 October 2019 to 2 February 2020 
 
79 rue des Archives
75003 Paris 
 
Tuesday to Sunday: 11am – 7pm 
 
Full price 9 € / Reduced price 5 € 

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson