Art

Helen Ennis reviews 'Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century' by Peter Galassi

by Helen Ennis •

November 2010, no. 326

Art

Helen Ennis reviews 'Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century' by Peter Galassi

by Helen Ennis •

November 2010, no. 326

Everyone, I suspect, has a favourite photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Mine shows two couples picnicking beside what I have always thought was the Marne River but turns out to be somewhere else altogether. Juvisy (1938), as it is now titled, depicts urban workers relaxing near a man-made pond in the suburbs of Paris. This is indicative of the exhaustive research of Peter Galassi and his colleagues, who have brought to light a huge amount of new information on Cartier-Bresson and his photographs. Their book has been published to accompany a Cartier-Bresson exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, where Galassi is chief curator of photography.

Helen Ennis

By this contributor

Helen Ennis is Emeritus Professor, ANU Centre for Art History and Art Theory and a past ABR Fellow. She is an independent photography curator and writer specialising in the area of Australian photographic practice. Her publications include Reveries: Photography and Mortality (2007) and Photography and Australia (2007). Her biography Margaret Michaelis: Love, Loss and Photography (2006) was awarded the Nettie Palmer Prize for Non-Fiction in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards, and the prize for Best Book from the Power Institute of Fine Arts and the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand. Her most recent book, Olive Cotton: A life in photography (2019), won the Magarey Medal for Biography and the Non-fiction prize in the Queensland Literary Awards in 2020. She is currently writing a biography of Max Dupain.