Description

CARTIER-BRESSON’S IMAGES À LA SAUVETTE (DECISIVE MOMENT), WITH COVER DESIGNS BY HENRI MATISSE, BOLDLY INSCRIBED BY CARTIER-BRESSON

CARTIER-BRESSON, Henri. Images à la Sauvette. Paris: Éditions Verve (Tériades), (1952). Folio, original pictorial boards designed by Matisse. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition in French, published simultaneously with the English, featuring 126 photographs by “the Raphael of 20th-century photographers,” with cover designs by Matisse, boldly inscribed, “pour Martine Gallagher. Henri Cartier-Bresson.”

“Cartier-Bresson is famous for his theory of the ‘decisive moment—that is seizing the split second when the subject stands revealed in its most significant aspect? Today he ranks as one of the most important and influential photographers of this century” (Blodgett, 96), recognized as “the Raphael of 20th-century photographers” (Icons of Photography, 58). Images à la Sauvette (The Decisive Moment) is Cartier-Bresson’s most famous work, containing his most comprehensive and important statement on the meaning, technique, and utility of photography. “The simultaneous publication in New York in July 1952, with its cover by Matisse (who had just had his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art) was a tremendous success” (Roth, 134) and made Cartier-Bresson “an international superstar” (Parr & Badger, 208). The recipient Martine Gallagher was the wife of the New York bookseller Michael Gallagher, who was a close friend of Cartier-Bresson. Text in French. Issued without separate caption pamphlet (prepared for the English edition only). Photographs fine, usual bit of soiling to covers and expert repair to spine. An excellent copy, very scarce inscribed.