Paul Strand Man with Hoe – Los RemediosArt Blart

Exhibition: ‘Paul Strand: The Balance of Forces’ at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris

Exhibition dates: 14th February – 23rd April, 2023

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Parmesan, Luzzara 
1953
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Balance of forces

Look at the “colour” of the Parmesan cheese in Strand’s photograph Parmesan, Luzzara  (1953, above). If we think of Ansel Adam’s ‘Zone System’ (the 11 zones in the system from 0-10) where pure black is Zone 0, mid grey (the colour of a Kodak Grey Card) is Zone 5 and pure white is Zone 10… then in “real life” the colour of the wheel of Parmesan would fall in about Zone 5. But what does Strand do? He places the “colour” of the Parmesan wheel in Zone 2-3, much darker than in real life.

In Strand’s “continuous search for a photographic formalism” – that is, the most important aspect of the photograph being its form, the way it is made and its purely visual aspects rather than its narrative content or its relationship to the visible world – then we would ignore Strand’s moving zones, his dark, brooding cheese.

I think not.

Strand’s formalism does not stand alone, for his photographs breathe the subject he is photographing. They are not just surfaces (which is what formalism is), for the viewer is invited to imbibe (absorb or assimilate (ideas or knowledge)) of the intensity and feeling of the culture and people from which these photographs emerge. Feel the intensity of the gaze of Young Boy, Gondeville, Charente, France (1951, below). Imagine placing yourself in the ethereal space of Tir a’Mhurain, Isle of South Uist, Outer Hebrides (1954, below). Dark cheese.

Strand’s photographs are formal and yet they contain a luminiferous ether/real – transmitting light, but also acting as a medium for the transmission and propagation of spirit.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Through each trip, Paul Strand tries to tell the real life of people: humble people, affected by wars, bad weather, diseases, oppressive regimes… The artist highlights those who fight for their freedom, for their happiness. Touching stories, which give all their power to these photographs.

Art and documentary research, social and political involvement and the desire to remain objective: these ambivalences bring great strength to Paul Strand’s work. It is these opposing imperatives that make his photographs so interesting, so exciting for us as viewers.

Cécile D. “Exhibition Paul Strand Or The Balance of Forces, A Journey in Photos at the HCB Foundation,” on the Sotir Paris website February 13, 2023 [Online] Cited 19/03/2023

The Fondation HCB offers a new perspective on the work of American photographer Paul Strand (1890-1976) from the collections of the Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid. While Strand is often celebrated as a pioneer of straight photography, this exhibition also addresses the deeply political dimension of his work.

Interview de Clément Chéroux sur l’exposition Paul Strand ou l’équilibre des forces

Martine Franck (British-Belgian, 1938-2012)
Photographer Paul Strand in his garden, Orgeval
1972
© Martine Franck / Magnum Photos

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Wall Street, New York
1915
Platinum/palladium Print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Sandwich Man, New York
1916
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Blind Woman, New York
1916
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

In the mid 1910s Paul Strand produced a series of images of New York portraying a truly genuine perspective of the city. Strand, a young photographer at the time, connected with modern art and incorporated some of its tendencies into a series of unprecedented views of the metropolis. Anticipating Straight Photography, he made images that distanced themselves from the precepts of Pictorialism through a direct portrayal of reality.

His photographs rapidly found favourable reception within the pages of Camera Work, the legendary magazine directed by Alfred Stieglitz who dedicated the last two issues of the publication to Strand’s compositions. Almost half of the images that appeared were close-up portraits shot with a rudimentary system that allowed Strand to photograph his subjects without them noticing. These surprising shots offered a lively perspective of the city and focused on some of its figures, who were marginal albeit ubiquitous, and seldom represented. With this attention to the periphery of urban life, Strand manifested his commitment to reality rooted in the example of his mentor Lewis Hine.

Blind Woman is one of the most iconic images in the history of North American photography. Published in 1917 by Stieglitz it combines the compositional strength and sharp clarity characteristic of Strand’s work.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE Collections website

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Abstraction, Bowls, Twin Lakes, Connecticut
1916
Gelatin silver print
22.5 × 16.5cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Abstraction, Porch Shadows
1916
Silver gelatin print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Portrait, Washington Square Park, New York
1916 (negative); 1917 (photogravure)
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

“Opposites are cured by opposites,” goes the saying. American photographer Paul Strand (1890-1976) was heir to two great traditions in photography, often presented as opposed. He had a formalist approach that sought to prove photography an art, and a social approach, which saw photography as more of a documentary instrument serving political ends. Perhaps this is explained by the fact that Alfred Stieglitz and Lewis Hine, who occupy the two poles in photography history, were both Strand’s mentors in his formative years.

While in the mid-1910s Strand photographed faces of the people on the streets of New York, the first period of his work is especially marked by formalism. In 1917, when Stieglitz dedicated the latest issue of his famous magazine Camera Work to Strand, it was above all to show that photography had its own artistic language. Starting with a journey to Mexico City (1932-1934), then Moscow (1935), his approach became more political. He joined the American Labor Party and worked with more than twenty organisations classified “anti-American” during the McCarthy era, leading to his departure from the United States for France. Many of Strand’s choices were deliberated through this political conscience: his choice of subject, places he photographed, writers he worked with, the book as main vector for distributing his work.

In the past few decades, numerous exhibitions have been held on Strand focusing on his formalism. By no means minimising this perspective, the current project seeks to recontextualise Strand, emphasising the importance of his political commitments. Between formalist pursuits and social concerns, the two forces at work in his art are brought into balance here. If Strand often stands among the 20th century’s major photographers, it is precisely because he knew how to offer just equilibrium between the two poles.

The exhibition presents almost 120 prints from the collections of the Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, the film Manhatta made by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler in 1921 as well as several prints lent by the Centre Pompidou.

Biography

Born in 1890 in New York, Paul Strand entered the New York Ethical Culture School (ECS) in 1907 where he studied under Lewis Hine, who introduced him to the Photo Secession gallery, founded by Alfred Stieglitz at 291 Fifth Avenue. Stieglitz had an important influence on Paul Strand’s work from the beginning. In 1916, his work was published for the first time in Stieglitz’s magazine, Camera Work, of which he was an avid reader, and then exhibited at 291 in the exhibition Photographs from New York and Other Places. During the war, Paul Strand worked as a hospital radiographer and, after his close-ups of machines, began to take an interest in surgical technique. In 1919 he travelled to Nova Scotia in Canada where he photographed his first landscapes and rock piles.

In 1921, Paul Strand made the film Manhatta with the photographer and painter Charles Sheeler. Between 1925 and 1932, various exhibitions of his work were shown in New York galleries. He travelled to Mexico from 1932 to 1934, during which time he had a solo exhibition at the Sala de Arte in Mexico City, was appointed Head of Film and Photography at the Mexican Secretariat of Education, and directed the film The Revolts of Alvarado (Redes) for the Mexican government.

Paul Strand travelled to the USSR in 1935, where he met Sergei Eisenstein. He then joined the Nykino group, around Leo Hurwitz, Ralph Steiner and Lionel Berman. Two years later, he became president of Frontier Film, a non-profit educational film production company, with former Nykino members.

In 1943, Paul Strand returned to photography after more than ten years in the film industry. In 1945, MoMA gave him a solo exhibition. From 1949 to 1957, the photographer undertook several trips to Europe, from which several books were written, and began an exile outside the United States, which coincided with the period of McCarthyism. He settled in Orgeval, France, where he remained until his death in 1976.

Press release from the Fondation HCB

Manhatta (1921) | Paul Strand – Charles Sheeler

In 1920 Paul Strand and artist Charles Sheeler collaborated on Manhatta, a short silent film that presents a day in the life of lower Manhattan. Inspired by Walt Whitman’s book “Leaves of Grass,” the film includes multiple segments that express the character of New York. The sequences display a similar approach to the still photography of both artists. Attracted by the cityscape and its visual design, Strand and Sheeler favoured extreme camera angles to capture New York’s dynamic qualities. Although influenced by Romanticism in its view of the urban environment, Manhatta is considered the first American avant-garde film.

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
St. Francis Church, Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico
1931
Platinum/palladium Print
17.1 × 21.8cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Men of Santa Ana, Lake Pátzcuaro, Michoacán
1933
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Man with Hoe – Los Remedios
1933
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Cristo with Thorns – Huexotla
1933
Silver gelatin print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Mr. Bolster, Weston, Vermont
1943
Silver gelatin print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Mr. Bennett, West River Valley, Vermont
1944
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

In 1945 a major exhibition dedicated to the work of Paul Strand took place at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that included 172 photographs, becoming the greatest retrospective devoted to a photographer to date. The project was conceived by Nancy Newhall, Head of the Department of Photography at the institution, who during the show’s preparation proposed to collaborate with Strand on a book about New England, a region located in the northeastern United States.

For a little over a month and a half Strand travelled with his camera throughout the region. His previous experience in Mexico had provided him with an attentive eye for capturing the social and cultural reality of the territory; in this instance through photographs of landscapes, diverse forms of architecture, and through his characteristic portraits. Resulting from this process his first photobook, Time in New England, was published in 1950, with texts by Nancy Newhall. The project’s outcome and his successful collaboration with Newhall inspired Strand to initiate a series of publications that coincided with a growing demand for travel books.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE Collections website

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Café Planchon, France
1950
Gelatin silver print on baryta paper
24.4 × 19.4cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

In 1950 Paul Strand left the United States due in great measure to the increasingly hostile social and political environment generated by the “witch hunt” of McCarthyism. Together with Hazel Kingsbury, who would become his third wife, Strand arrived in France. After their wedding that following year, they traveled the country together. Resulting from this journey and following the format of joining image and text that was established in his book Time in New England, the artist produced La France de Profil [France in Profile] in 1952. The book was published by renowned Swiss publisher Guilde du Livre, with texts by the writer and poet Claude Roy, whose points of view on the social reality and the ethical commitment of artists coincided with Strand’s.

In Café Planchon Paul Strand presents a rhetoric characteristic of the avant-garde, one of texts that belie the visual reality they attempt to portray, which grants them an inevitable and warm ironical distance. The image also contains a sense of artistic joy that is not merely related to the formal composition but is manifested in the proliferation of the vegetation, in the tactility of textures, and in the charming gradation of light that is finally enveloped by shadow. The richness of the image arises as a result of the photographer’s attention to this particular reality, which is celebrated in the book, as well as his technical prowess and the dedication he poured into the prints made in the darkroom.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE Collections website

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Fisherman, Banyuls, Pyrénées-Orientales, France
1950-1951
Silver gelatin print
16.1 × 12.5cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Young Boy, Gondeville, Charente, France
1951
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

In 1952 Paul Strand published La France de profil [France in Profile] which included the photographs he took during his trip throughout the country. With texts by Claude Roy, the book was published by Swiss publisher Guilde du Livre, which had been producing a collection of travel books since the 1940s containing texts by well known writers such as Paul Éluard and Jacques Prévert, and photographs by artists such as Robert Doisneau and Michel Huet.

In a similar fashion to how he had articulated a unique perspective far from the hegemonic exoticising of Mexico during the 1930s, Strand portrayed France in a way that did not settle on its most picturesque features. As inferred by the title, the series is an oblique perspective on the territory materialised through an assortment of images that are arranged in a singular style. Towns, landscapes, examples of vernacular architecture, and faces of elderly people and fishermen appear next to photographs detailing small objects that – beyond their documentary value – join the artistic language of images while simultaneously evoking the time that is inscribed within them.

Young Boy captures the characteristic intensity of the gamut of black and white hues in Strand’s work. The beauty hidden within the heroic ruggedness of the boy’s face, emphasised by the artist’s treatment of light, exemplifies the way in which Strand’s attention to the artistic values he upholds effectuates his political commitment.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE Collections website

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Anna Attinga Frafra, Accra, Ghana
1951
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Throughout the 1960s, during the Cold War, Paul Strand continued his documentary work traveling to different socialist countries such as Romania, Egypt, and Ghana. As evidenced by the series of photobooks that he published, Strand’s perspective on these realities is translated into portraits, landscapes, and images of the communities’ daily life and their objects. Nevertheless, although direct references to political issues are eloquently scarce in his photographs, some elements can be observed that subtly point to the positive aspects of the revolutionary processes occurring in these countries.

Such is the case of the portrait of Anna Attinga Frafra – included in Ghana: An African Portrait (New York, Aperture, 1976) – in which the simplicity of the composition points to one dissonant element: the books balanced on the girl’s head. The symbolic character of the image serves as a reference to the literacy and education campaigns planned for the Ghanaian populations, which included women, and has an undoubtedly, albeit subtle, propagandistic nature. Nevertheless, the photograph makes sense and coexists seamlessly with the other images that make up the series. As a whole, they offer a vision that is an alternative from ethnographic typology, incorporating the reality of the aspirations, efforts, and hopes of the community without becoming crude propaganda.

Text from the Fundación MAPFRE Collections website

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
The Lusetti Family, Luzzara, Italy
1953
Gelatin silver print
16.9 × 21.3cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Luzzara
1953
Gelatin silver print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Postmistress and Daughter, Luzzara, Italy
1953
Silver gelatin print
33.3 × 26.4cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
House, Benbecula, Isle of South Uist, Outer Hebrides
1954
Silver gelatin print
14.9 × 11.7cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Milly, John and Jean MacLellan, South Uist, Hebrides
1954
Silver gelatin print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Agnes MacDonald, Morag and Ewen MacLellan, Isle of South Uist, Outer Hebrides
1954
Silver gelatin print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Tir a’Mhurain, Isle of South Uist, Outer Hebrides
1954
Silver gelatin print
14.8 × 12.4cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Un paese
1955
Silver gelatin print
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

300,000 lire, 10 sheets, 10 pillowcases, 10 towels, 10 parures and the bedroom are not enough to marry me, you can’t do less. He has to go into the army, otherwise we’d get married right away even if there’s little work. This year he has done less than a thousand hours of work.

Text by Zavattini, photographs by Paul Strand, Turin, Einaudi, 1955, p. 73

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Iordache Ciaocata, Bicaz, Romania
1960
Silver gelatin print
33.2 × 35.7cm
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive. Fundación MAPFRE Collections

Paul Strand book covers

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
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Exhibition: ‘Henri Cartier-Bresson / Paul Strand, Mexico 1932-1934’ at HCB Foundation, Paris

Exhibition dates: 11th January – 22nd April 2012

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Mexico
1934
Gelatin silver print
© Magnum, Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation

“The American’s immobility contrasts with [the] Frenchman’s fluidity.”

Press releases should be very careful when making such sweeping generalisations. Personally I find the photographs of Cartier-Bresson the more static (both physical and psychological) of the two photographers. The compartmentalisation of space in Bresson’s photographs – the use of diagonals and verticals – is more fixed than in the sensuous Strand, the emotions more didactic and formalised even as they seek the spontaneity of photojournalism. The placement of the two figures in Strand’s Men of Santa Ana (1933, below) is superlative, with the central dividing column and combination of tones and textures, father and son(?), stares and postures. Cartier-Bresson’s Prostitute (1934, below) is simpler in pose and purpose but we must remember this was a twenty-six year old photographer still finding his voice in the world, whereas Strand was a much older person and a more experienced photographer.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Natcho Aguirre, Santa Clara, Mexico
1934
Gelatin silver print
© Magnum, Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Calle Cuauhtemoctzin (two prostitutes), Mexico City
1934
Gelatin silver print
© Magnum, Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
The Spider of Love, Mexico City
1934
Gelatin silver print
© Magnum, Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Mexico
1934
Gelatin silver print
© Magnum, Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Juchitan
1934
Gelatin silver print
© Magnum, Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation

Bringing together such different works by two great masters in the history of photography is not self-evident. There are many points of convergence, but their styles are profoundly different. The American’s immobility contrasts with Frenchman’s fluidity. They both travelled to Mexico during the same period and they crossed paths in New York in 1935 when they joined the political filmmakers’ group Nykino (which later became Frontier Films) in order to explore filmmaking at a critical point in their respective careers.

In autumn 1932, Paul Strand (1890-1976) set out for Mexico by car at the invitation of the Mexican Ministry of Education. He exhibited his photographs there and had the pleasure of witnessing the popular success of his images. It was in the course of working in the streets of Mexico, a practice which he had abandoned for many years, that Strand took up a different documentary style. At that point, he received a proposal to make a series of films. In 1934, he shot Redes (released in English as The Wave), a ‘docu-fiction’ about the oppression of the fishermen in the village of Alvarado. The film was screened in Mexico in 1936, and subsequently in the United States and France. In 1950, fleeing the climate of McCarthyism in the United States, he came to France and ultimately settled in the village of Orgeval, where he remained until the end of his life.

In 1934, Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), who was eighteen years younger than Strand, signed up for a French ethnographic mission which was supposed to take him to Argentina. In the end, the mission was suspended and the twenty-six-year-old photographer spent a year in Mexico, literally fascinated by the country. He worked for several newspapers there, moved in intellectual and artistic circles together with his sister and worried about his future. In March 1935, he exhibited his work at the Palacio de Bellas Artes with Mexican photographer Manuel Álvarez Bravo. The local press reacted favourably and the young Frenchman contacted New York art dealer Julien Levy – who had already exhibited him in 1933 – to suggest a show of his recent work. He left Mexico with the firm intention of becoming a filmmaker and thus headed straight for the Nykino group. Strand’s prints come from various international collections; those of Cartier-Bresson belong to the Fondation HCB archives.

Press release from the HCB Foundation website

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Prostitute, Calle Cuauhtemoctzin, Mexico
1934
Gelatin silver print
© Magnum, Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Men of Santa Ana, Lake Patzcuaro Michoacan
1933
Gelatin silver print
© Paul Strand

From January 11 to April 22, 2012, the HCB Foundation will pay tribute to two great masters of photography: Henri Cartier-Bresson and Paul Strand. The perspective of their work on Mexico between 1932 and 1934 will be an opportunity for the public to discover two visions of the same country and especially two approaches to photography.

In the fall of 1932, Paul Strand (1890-1976) left the United States and a personal life in crisis for Mexico. It was at the invitation of Carlos Chavez, whom he had met a little earlier and now responsible for culture at the Ministry of Education, that Strand discovered this country of which he said “I thought of Mexico as something mysterious, dark and dangerous, inhospitable.” However, Strand remained in Mexico for two years until his return to New York in December 1934.

The support of Carlos Chavez proved to be very important and enabled Strand to exhibit for the first time in Mexico at the Sala de Arte of the Ministry of Education in February 1933. After this first success, he left in the spring of 1933 to investigate Mexican arts and crafts in the state of Michoacán. Fascinated by the indigenous culture and the piety of the inhabitants, he brought back from this mission portraits of religious statues, men, women and children in the streets, landscapes and architecture.

He was then appointed director of photographic and cinematographic activities for the Ministry of Education and was entrusted with the production of a series of films on Mexico. He then worked on the script for his first feature film Redes, which is intended as a docu-fiction based on the struggle of a group of men, fishermen, against a corrupt society. The actors of the film are mainly the inhabitants of the village of Alvarado. The realisation is complex but the film is finally screened at the Juarez de Alvarado theatre on June 4, 1936. Barely a year later, it is under the title The Wave that the American public discovers this film very largely influenced by Russian cinema. Unfortunately, the new Mexican government set up in 1934 with the election of Lazaro Cardenas abandoned the film series project and Strand therefore decided to return to New York. He then abandoned photography, joined the association of filmmakers Nykino, devoted himself to political cinema and became president of Frontier Film, Nykino’s new name.

In 1940, thanks to the financial support of Virginia Stevens, his new wife, he published “Photographs of Mexico”, a portfolio, published in 250 copies, of 20 carefully assembled photogravures. A copy will be presented in the exhibition.

In 1951, when the witch hunt was launched in the United States by McCarthy, Strand decided to settle in Orgeval, France, where he would spend the end of his life.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) landed in Mexico City in July 1934. He was part of an ethnographic mission led by Doctor Julio Brandan and supported by the Trocadéro Museum to follow the construction of a major Pan-American road. The mission got off to a bad start because the funding promised by the Mexican government was not forthcoming. The majority of the members of the expedition then returned to France, disappointed to see the project abandoned. But HCB decides to stay because “he feels a real crush on this country”. Nicknamed “the little Frenchman with shrimp cheeks” by Lupe Cervantes, his Mexican “fiancée”, Cartier-Bresson travels the country with his Leica. He therefore manages to survive in this country, befriends poets like Langston Hugues, Tonio Salazar or Natcho Aguirre, is passionate about muralists and their revolutionary frescoes, works for the press like Todo. He exhibited at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in March 1935 with the Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo. “When he left, he declared himself a Frenchman from Mexico.”

During his stay, Henri Cartier-Bresson maintains frequent contact with the New York gallery owner Julien Levy and invites him to exhibit his recent photographs. This project will be carried out in April 1935 under the title “Documentary and Antigraphic photographs”. On this occasion, he will find the Mexican Manuel Alvarez Bravo and meet Walker Evans whom he deeply esteems. As soon as he arrived in New York, Henri Cartier-Bresson turned to cinema, “I stopped photographing in 1935, when I was in New York. Photography has always been for me only one of the different means of visual expression. […] I therefore started, with Paul Strand and with others, to learn cinema. I changed tools. Thanks to financial help from his parents, he bought a 35mm camera and joined the Nykino group. He learned a lot from this group of committed filmmakers and on his return to France, he assisted Jean Renoir on several of his films (La vie est à nous [Life is ours], Une partie de campagne [A country party]). It was not until 1937 that he left for Spain to make documentaries on the Spanish front. (Spain Will Live, Victory of Life, and With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain)

Putting these two photographers into perspective is not easy. The convergences are numerous but the styles vary profoundly. The fluidity of the French contrasts with the immobility of the American. Both travel to Mexico at the same time, both meet in New York in 1935, when they join the group of committed filmmakers Nykino, to try a cinematic experience in a key phase of their two careers.

The exhibition presents 90 black and white prints: the works of Paul Strand come from Spanish, American and Mexican collections; those of Cartier-Bresson, some of which are unpublished, come from the collection of the HCB Foundation. The exhibition will be presented from May 13 to September 2, 2012 at the Point du Jour Center d’art in Cherbourg.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, published by Steidl, with a preface by Agnès Sire and an essay by Clément Chéroux.

Press dossier from HCB Foundation website translated from the French by Google Translate