Images à la sauvette

Henri Cartier-Bresson’s first major photographic collection, published simultaneously in English under the title The Decisive Moment, has become legendary. The book brings together 126 photographs taken between 1930 and 1950, accompanied by a text by the author.

This signed inscription attests to an early meeting between Cartier-Bresson and Lucien Clergue, then a young photographer from Arles already close to Picasso, whom he had met outside the town’s arena in 1955, and to Cocteau. Cartier-Bresson had just returned from several months in China, where he had been invited by the Chinese Cultural Relations authorities for the tenth anniversary of the Maoist seizure of power — authorities well aware that he had witnessed the fall of the Kuomintang in December 1948.

That summer of 1959, Cartier-Bresson had just spent about ten days in Arles, from which he brought back a number of photographs, including the celebrated “L’Immortelle.” He was present at the summer festival celebrating the centenary of the publication of Frédéric Mistral’s Mirèio. A native of Arles, Clergue was the founder of this local festival, which aimed to promote the wearing of traditional costume by the young women of Arles, several of whom Cartier-Bresson photographed that summer of 1959. Originally, the young women who attained, during these festivals, the status of Arlésiennes solemnly received a diploma from the hand of Frédéric Mistral himself!

The dedication testifies to the mutual esteem between two major figures of twentieth-century French photography, and to this early meeting that summer.

Eleven years later, Clergue would found the Rencontres d’Arles: Cartier-Bresson would be guest of honor there in 1979.

The Book of 101 Books, p. 208; Parr & Badger, The Photobook, vol. I, pp. 208–209.