Henri Cartier-Bresson : Chine 1948-1949 / 1958

Through the abundant archives of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, this book retraces and analyzes one of the key moments in the photographer’s career, the stay in China, from December 1948 to September 1949.

Following an assignment from Life magazine, and shortly after the creation of the Magnum cooperative agency, Henri Cartier-Bresson made this journey during the transition from the nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek to the communist regime of Mao Zedong. More than so-called “reportage” photographs, the resulting images, many of which have remained among his most famous, bear witness to significant events, social circumstances and lifestyles that will disappear, and above all attract attention by their empathetic and poetic qualities.

Marked by the country and its culture, as by the political changes of the time, Henri Cartier-Bresson returned to China in 1958 and saw the effects of regime change. Expanding the subject of the book, this second stay here completes the first, both in resonance and in contrast.

The work—the photographic selection of which was carried out in close collaboration with the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson by the authors, Michel Frizot and Ying-lung Su—analyzes and organizes an unpublished photographic, documentary, and historical corpus of exceptional magnitude. Thanks to the book, we have access to the practice, the intentions, and the daring of a major figure in photography at the time and under the circumstances that will make him a reference and a celebrity of the photoessay.