When the Germans captured photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson during World War II and tossed him in a POW camp, the Museum of Modern Art feared the worst and began preparing a memorial retrospective. Imagine their surprise when Cartier-Bresson escaped, heard of the effort and offered to help compose his own requiem. The 300-some photos he selected, spanning his best work from 1932 to 1946, are on display as a group for the first time in a half-century at the International Center of Photography.
It was literally a scrapbook he prepared, of photos taken with his trusty Leica, printed playing-card sized and mounted in a leatherbound album embossed with the gilded archaic phrase, “Scrap Book.” Most on display are these small versions; this is an exhibition necessitating repeated bows and squints, so as to scrutinize Cartier-Bresson’s often serendipitous detail. Thankfully, some of the best prints are presented in larger versions, as they were in the original MoMA exhibition—in fact the blowups are literally from the MoMA exhibit, whites yellow-tinged with age.
My favorite photo, crappily reproduced here but presented in both small and large versions at the exhibit, is this one, Madrid, taken in 1933. (The whole series he took that autumn in Spain of peasants, prostitutes, gypsies and everyday people is genius.) Madrid has an utterly calming symmetry, the balance of frozen human movement grounding the scene as a constellation of windows hovers above, and if Bresson’s favored shooting method is to be believed, this was taken without any specific aim. That makes it a composition with beauty of staggering chance. I wondered how many shots or even rolls Cartier-Bresson exhausted during the same session before he got this one.
In the most revelatory element of the exhibition, I was surprised to learn that Cartier-Bresson cropped Behind the Gare St. Lazare, one of his most famous photos and a personal favorite of his. Normally, cropping would not be worth mentioning in a photo exhibit but Cartier-Bresson rarely cropped, preferring moments de grâce. The museum has on display the only extant copy of the original St. Lazare, complete with crop lines grease-penciled down the left side of the proof, hash-marking into oblivion an out-of-focus slab of fence.
I also enjoyed the photos Cartier-Bresson took in Paris in the mid-’40s of celebrities in the worlds of art and philosophy—Picasso, Braque, Éluard, Bonnard, Satre, Camus—including a small series of Matisse, seated comfortably at home in Venice, holding a dove in one hand while sketching it with the other.