Henri Cartier Bressonwas born August 22, 1908 in Chanteloup, France, a rural village not far from Paris. He is best known for his images of life in Europe during the 1930s through the 1950s. In 1931, he embarked upon a long trip across Germany, Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary with a writer friend. In 1939 enlisted in the French army and was made a corporal in its film and photo unit. on June 1940 his unit was captured in the Vosges Mountains and then he was transported to a prisoner-of-war camp in Wuerttemberg. He successfully escaped on his third try and sneak back to France, where he obtained false identity papers and managed to find work as a commercial photographer, again in Paris. He was also active in an underground group that aided escaped POWs like himself, and organised secret photography units that documented the German occupation.
His work has long been honoured with museum retrospectives, which have served to elevate his street-level imagery to the realm of artistic expression.work was revolutionary because he used a small, portable camera, which allowed him to record a "decisive moment" in time. That spontaneity-and the unrehearsed, unstaged glimpse into human nature that it captured-would become the distinctive element common to most of his images.
(France. World War II. Liberation. The Alsace. A Bridge over the Rhine near Strasbourg. 1944.)
(Germany. Dessau. A transit camp was located between the American and Soviet zones organised for refugees; political prisoners, POW's, STO's (Forced Labourers), displaced persons, returning from the Eastern front of Germany that had been liberated by the Soviet Army. A Soviet child who was deported with his parents, returning to his homeland. April 1945.)
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