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WHAT'S ON
‘Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Man, The Image & The World’ showcases over 260 of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs, selected by Cartier-Bresson and long-time friend and publisher Robert Delpire for an exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France Paris in 2003 before Cartier-Bresson’s death in 2004. The exhibition encompasses his portraits as well as his travels through Mexico, Indonesia, Europe, China, Japan, the United States and the Middle East, and presents some of Cartier-Bresson’s most acclaimed images from the breadth of his career alongside a selection of his documentary films.
Cartier-Bresson is responsible for some of the most iconic photographic images of portraiture and photojournalism. In many cases his photographs have become defining records of modern history, portraits of European culture from the 1930s to the 1970s, and examples of a ‘decisive moment’ — a phrase often used to describe Cartier-Bresson’s works, which can illustrate action, emotion and an entire story in a single image. Cartier-Bresson’s work focuses on humanity and, often preferring to blend into a situation, his camera captured faces and bodies full of emotion and intentions both intimate and bold.
Cartier-Bresson travelled extensively to document some of the most significant historical events of the twentieth century. His celebrated assignments for Life and other magazines not only reshaped photojournalism but gave its readership rare insight into world events such as the impact of MK Gandhi’s assassination in India in 1948, the fall of the Kuomintang and Mao Zedong’s communist troops marching into the Chinese capital in 1948 and into 1949 and life behind the Iron Curtain in the Soviet Union during 1950s.
A freelancer throughout his working life, Cartier-Bresson, together with fellow photojournalist Robert Capa, founded the Magnum photographic agency which not only elevated the art of photojournalism but won recognition and representation for photographers’ interests.
Henri Cartier-Bresson:
The Man, The Image & The World
27 August - 27 November 2011 | Queensland Art Gallery
Exclusive to Brisbane
'Vision Viet Nam'
by Helen Savory
Qld Centre for Photography - 24 September - 23 October 2011
My first sight of Viet Nam was from a sky of translucent gold, dotted with low scudding clouds each drenching the earth below in a grey torrent. Banking over the thick meandering body of the Sai Gon River, watery arms feathering out to slender fingers, I saw small hamlets nestled amongst coconut groves and patchworks of rice paddies, many newly tilled and full of water shining like mica in the sunlight. Stepping out of the airport I picked up an energy that infused me, sweeping me into a city that pulsed with life yet was devoid of cars, flashy shop windows and neon signs.
I fell in love with the beauty of Viet Nam before I had even put a foot in it. It did not take me long to fall in love with the Vietnamese people with their tenacity, courage, ingeniousness, open friendliness and wicked sense of humour.
It was May 28th, 1992 and I was 27 and I had come to Viet Nam out of curiosity. The country had just opened its doors to tourists and I was amongst the first to arrive. I had also just started a consummate love affair with my camera – the beginning of my life passion with photography. On Cloud Nine, camera always firmly in hand, I travelled around the country by bus, boat, train and motorbike. Every time I left Viet Nam I was drawn back. In 1996, after a six-month working blitz in London, I walked into a travel agency to buy a ticket to South Africa. I was raised in Malawi and wanted to return to my roots. I walked out with a ticket to Sai Gon!
After 17 years in Viet Nam, my roots are well and truly planted there. I returned to Australia only for my daughter’s high school education and we visit every year.
The photographs I have selected for this exhibition are not of any famous destination. Rather, they are vignettes of daily life that you might see as you travel through the county. There is a theme of work and religion that tie the photographs together, aspects that the Vietnamese highly value. I hope you enjoy!
I am interested in how we exhibit, view and mass-produce images of each other and how these often carbon copied representations become individualized by the effects of time. I explore the depictions of people and why such renderings make me feel uneasy given my belief that everything that we are looking at is in some way distorted. I do this through photographing displays of humans, captured as in-camera montages of layered media we are surrounded with in public spaces. Often what I am photographing has been presented as an idealized form, whether within magazines, advertising or even family history. I look towards the decay, deterioration or manipulation of this romantic portrayal, finding a fascination with the distinct lack of control we have over what happens to the images over time.
Biography
Born and raised in Australia, I came to photography as a means of conveying my isolation while traveling, using the camera to articulate the overwhelming sense of loneliness encountered. Since settling in New York, I have further explored the idea of solitude - by looking at the way we view and interact with other animals, our environment and each other - through on-going projects, collaborations and exhibitions.
'Passage'
by Zev Jonas
Qld Centre for Photography 29 October - 27 November 2011
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