Known for its reportage style and early connection to the rebelliousness of Surrealism, the work of Cartier-Bresson has always subverted narrative expectations. A reluctant and ambivalent scion of the bourgeoisie, Cartier-Bresson captured in photographs the plight of the very dispossessed, marginal,
Henri Matisse made it look easy, but don't be fooled -- those vibrant, lyrical scenes and simple, geometric portraits which look tossed off the tip of his paintbrush actually took weeks, sometimes months to create. A perfectionist, he once mused, "Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the bran