Carnets mexicains 1934-1964 [Mexican Notebooks]

Paris: Hazan, 1995.
1 vol. (215 x 235 mm) of 81 p. and [1] f. Publisher’s cardboard.

First edition. Text by Carlos Fuentes.
Presentation copy, inscribed: “To Tina Bruce, a friend of Jeanine, very best wishes, Henri Cartier [arrow pointing to his full name on the title page]”.

We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.

Henri Cartier-Bresson set off for Mexico in 1934 to take part in a mission to survey the route of the Pan-American Highway. No sooner had he arrived than the expedition broke up, due to lack of money, and Cartier-Bresson spent more than a year having a series of adventures, first in Mexico City, then in Juchitan, a small town at the entrance to Chiapas. There he worked as an ethnographer in poor and underprivileged neighborhoods: men, women, children, outcasts, peasants, prostitutes, artisans, shops and cemeteries were the favorite subjects of the 27-year-old, who carried his first Leica, bought in Marseille two years earlier.

“It has been said that these photographs belong to his surrealist period. All of Mexico is an immense wound, a wall tattooed with shrapnel, a nopal studded with stab wounds, an altar dripping with golden tears that moves him and which he describes as follows: “In fact, I don’t know what surrealist photography is: for me, surrealism is above all literature. But as far as the conception of existence is concerned, if surrealism is love, freedom, imagination, the power of the unconscious, permanent revolt, then I have never ceased to be surrealist.” (in Fondation Cartier-Bresson, presentation of the Mexican Notebooks).