Customer Reviews

Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art (World Design S.)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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To put it short: half of the book is text. Out of 290 bw pictures 41 are drawings of H.C-B., some are photographs of other authors, some more are portraits relevant to people mentioned in text. I agree with other reviewers - choice is very good. The concept of the book and the important points are well chosen, too, but it' s filled with too many words.

When you accept this book as large treatise on H.C.-B., photography and art itself - that means dominantly text, illustrated specifically with his photographs - you can learn a lot of interesting things (if you're patient enough to read it all through). But after a while you can find yourselves (like me) somehow distracted from the photographs. Though an expert in H.C.- B. life and work, J.P.Montier seems to me as he doesn't possess one crucial ability of his subject - the gift to pick up instant out of plenty. So I think, I would like more to let speak pictures for themselves with some relevant facts and quotations, revealing background. After all, Henri Cartier-Bresson is a photographer, isn't he? My personal wish is to see contact copies of film rolls, at least parts from which were the famous pictures chosen - it could tell us more about the field work of this Master of the Right Moment.

This is one of the greatest published collections of the spectrum of CB's work -- it includes portraits, street photography, surrealist images, travel, etc. The pictures are beautiful. The text, which really needed to be edited more carefully, is nonetheless insightful. For anyone who wants to learn to make better pictures, buy this book, analyze the pictures and use what you learn.

First, the image selection (and according to the book it's HCB himself who did it) and presentation is probably the best for any collection of HCB photographs. Our perception is affected qualitatively by the size, and many of the same images printed full page simply lose in comparison even without considering the discussion and examples of visual reading the author of the thesis/book provides. Secondly, the text, while academic, is truly useful because it introduces a lot of background and thinking around photography as artistic phenomenon - therefore, if not read passively, and then likely to cause the kind of irritation a previous German reviewer displayed, but as a means to start your own thinking processes, it succeeds excellently. (Or, as someone noting the length of the my previous sentence could decide, likes attract ..;o)).. ) Possibly one of the best books around if you are an active photographer intrested in the aesthetics of the "seen" kind of photography - i.e. photography that aims to hunt out instances of artistic order chaotic Life creates from time to time - as contrasted to the "created" or conceptual approach, or if you are interested in the history of the art/medium and want to make sense of its roots and of its arguably the most brilliant practitioner in the XX century. Warning for USA readers: European thought. Antithesis of the "Dummies" books. Thinking required.

HCB was a master of the type of photography he practiced. The photographs speak for themselves. They are beautiful, they are classic and they will always transcend any words people speak about them. So, what's the point in weighing down the impact of these photographs with a text that is so pretentious and unreadable it turns off everyone but the pretentious reader?

Buy this book. It is one of my favorites on Cartier-Bresson. Look at the photographs first and you will gain respect and appreciation for the photographer. But only skim the text.

Really an amazing book. I have come across many great "picture books" showing off fabulous reproductions of his work but if you want to read about what really drove the man to take some of the most amazing shots of the 20th century, pick up this book. It has "typically (outstanding) and (brilliant) academic French art crticism[sic] (and is) translated in(to) the English edition in a way that still manages to read like (outstanding) and (brilliant) academic French".

If you want to get behind the lens with this great master (the interviews and quotes are very stimulating and the choice of images were chosen by the author with HCB himself), buy this book. And if you are also a "street" photographer, this book will teach you more about this type of photography than any class at "Kunsthochschule für Medien" or book on "technique" could ever hope to.

A masterpiece.

The best published collection I've seen of Henri Cartier-Bresson's pictures, from some of the famous shots of the 30s and 40s (God how I hate that smirking brat with the wine bottles. Put me off appreciating HC-B for a long time) to some of the wonderfully impressionistic later landscapes.

The text ... well, buy the book for the pictures and look at them. Typically pretentious and impenetrable academic French art crticism, translated in the English edition in a way that still manages to read like pretentious and impenetrable academic French.

But did I mention the pictures?