Steidlville

French language edition only

Henri Cartier-Bresson was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1940. After two unsuccessful attempts, he managed to escape in 1943. During this time, the MoMA of New York, assuming that the artist had died in war, started preparing a “posthumous” exhibition of his work. When he reappeared, he was delighted to learn about the exhibition and he decided to review his entire work and to select those photographs that he would have liked to exhibit. He selected and printed about 300 pictures, mostly unpublished at that time and went on to New York in 1946 with the prints in his suitcase. On his arrival, he bought a big “scrap book” into which he glued all his prints before showing them at MoMA.
The exhibition was inaugurated on 4 February 1947, just before the creation of Magnum.
In the 1990s, Cartier-Bresson once again became interested in this scrap book. The HCB Foundation, the present owner of the prints, has finished restoring them, making it possible to exhibit these extraordinary hitherto unpublished works to the public. This book is a facsimile reprint of Cartier-Bresson’s original scrap book.