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HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON Cina 1948-49 | 1958
Inizio evento 18.02.2022 | Fine evento 03.07.2022
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“Eye of the century”. This is how Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) – one of the most important cultural protagonists of the twentieth century, considered the pioneer of photojournalism – was defined.
A solo exhibition, linked to the Chinese reportages for which he is remembered as an absolute master of the so-called “decisive moment”, will take place for the first time in Italy from the 18th February.
The exhibition “Henri Cartier-Bresson. Cina 1948-49 | 1958”, at Mudec Photo from the 18th February to the 3rd July 2022, produced by 24 ORE Cultura – Gruppo 24 ORE and promoted by the Comune di Milano-Cultura, was realized thanks to the collaboration of the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson and it brings together an exceptional corpus of photos and documents of the French photoreporter: over 100 original prints together with publications of magazines of the time, documents and letters coming from the collection of the Fondation HCB.
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An unprecedented excursus describing two key-moments in the history of China: the fall of the Kuomintang (1948-1949) and Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” (1958).
An important moment in the history of world photojournalism, lived through the personal approach of the master Cartier-Bresson, who was the first to highlight – through the eye of his lens – important themes of the changes in contemporary Chinese history, being also able to present to the Western world aspects hidden by the regime’s propaganda such as the exploitation of human resources and the omnipresence of militia.
Through his snapshots, the artist managed, for decades and with incredible elegance and accuracy, to illustrate the story of the world from France to China, from India to the United States.
A unique style capable of capturing the immediacy and veracity of “the decisive moment”. In this perspective the use of black and white in his photos allowed him to highlight the form and substance of reality. Each one of his snapshots therefore managed to capture the contemporaneity of things and of life.
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THE EXHIBITION
On 25 November 1948, Henri-Cartier-Bresson was commissioned by Life magazine to shoot a story on the “last days of Beijing” before the arrival of the Maoist troops. Having gone for two weeks, he would stay for ten months, mainly in the Shanghai area, witnessing the fall of the city of Nanjing held by Kuomintang, then forced to stay in Shanghai under Communist control for four months, leaving China a few days before the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China (1 October 1949).
As the months went by, his accounts of “traditional” and the establishment of a new order (Beijing, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai), produced with complete freedom of action, met with great success in Life and top international news magazine (including Paris Match, which had just been founded).
This long stay in China proved to be a seminal moment in the history of photojournalism: this reportage series came at the beginning of the Magnum Photos agency, which Henri Cartier-Bresson had co-founded eighteen months earlier in New York, and brought a new, less event-based, more poetic and detached style, attentive as much to the people as to the balance of the composition. A great many of these photos remain among the most famous in photography (such as Gold Rush in Shanghai).
One of the repercussions of China 1948-49 was that, from the fifties onwards, Henri Cartier-Bresson became a major benchmark in “new” photojournalism and the renaissance of photography in general. The books The Decisive Moment (Verve, 1952) and D’une Chine à l’autre (Delpire, 1954), prefaced by Jean-Paul Sartre, confirmed this supremacy.
In 1958, as the tenth anniversary drew near, Henri Cartier-Bresson set off again on a journey of discovery, yet under completely different conditions: constrained by an accompanying guide for four months, he travelled thousands of kilometres on the launch of the “Great Leap Forward” to report on the results of the Revolution and the forced industrialisation of rural areas. He nonetheless succeeded in also showing the least positive aspects, such as the exploitation of human labour and the hold of the militias. Once again, the report met with international success.
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This exhibition brings together over one hundred original prints from 1948-49 and 1958, and many archive documents.
The guide of the exhibition is published by 24 ORE Cultura in collaboration with Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson and is available at the bookshops and online.
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USEFUL INFORMATION:
MUDEC Via Tortona 56, Milano
DATES 16/03 - 31/07/2022
OPENING HOURS Mon. 02:30 p.m. – 07:30 p.m. | Tue., Wed., Fri., Sun., 10:00 a.m. ‐ 07:30 p.m. | Thu., Sat., 10:00 a.m. ‐10:30 p.m.
TICKETS Full ticket € 12
Reduced ticket € 10
INFOLINE: tel. 02/54917 (Mon.-Fri. 10:00 a.m. - 05:00 p.m.)
mudec.it c.museoculture@comune.milano.it
Press office: 24 ORE CULTURA - elettra.occhini@ilsole24ore.com - tel.02/30.22.3917
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