In 1958, LIFE asked Henri Cartier-Bresson to return to China, a country he last covered in at the outbreak of the Communist takeover in 1949. Cartier-Bresson was largely sympathetic to the Communist cause and was mostly embedded on a guided tour. While his photographs do not present a critique of Communism, he nonetheless witnessed the beginnings of the disastrous Great Leap Forward.
Tag: Henri Cartier-Bresson
Shanghai by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1949
Henri Cartier-Bresson spent ten months in China in 1949. LIFE published 26 photos of his in a special report (A Last Look at Peiping).
Seville, 1933 by Henri Cartier-Bresson | Contact Sheets
In 1932, Henri Cartier-Bresson set out on a tour of Southern Europe and the Maghreb; this journey with his 35 mm Leica was to be his formative tour that set out the rules of the art for not only the 25-year old photographer but also for a century of photojournalists who followed him.
The Men Behind ‘Henri Cartier-Bresson’ Curtain
Sometime in 1934, just after Hitler had come to power, three great photographers met in […]
Che Guevara | Rene Burri
Laura Bergquist of LOOK met Che Guevara at the UN and asked for an interview. She took Rene Burri with her to Havana for her profile.
Three Boys at Lake Tanganyika
“Think while you shoot”, wrote Martin Munkacsi in Harper’s Bazaar. From his early years as […]
Au Bord de la Marne
Although he would later be feted as the father of photojournalism, Henry Cartier-Bresson was at […]
Nehru and the Mountbattens
In 1947, Henri Cartier-Bresson was in India for the first time to document the newly independent […]
Derriere la Gare Saint-Lazare
He was arguably the last century’s greatest photographer, and the photograph above was to Time […]
Nehru announces Gandhi’s death
1947 found Henri Cartier-Bresson in India to document her independence. As the result of several […]