Henri Cartier-Bresson

Michael Shapiro Gallery, San Francisco, 2004

Henri Cartier Bresson, Les Européens: Photographies (Paris, 1955), p. 114

Robert Delpire, ed., Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer (Boston, 1979), pl. 141

Henri Cartier-Bresson, À Propos de Paris (Boston, 1994), pl. 16

Jean-Pierre Montier, Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Artless Art (Boston, 1996), p. 157

Carol Squiers, 'HCB The Decisive Moments,' American Photo Magazine, September/October 1997, p. 52

Peter Fetterman, ed., Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Master Set (Santa Monica, 2004), pl. 108

Peter Galassi, ed., Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010), p. 55

Matthieu Humery et al., Henri Cartier-Bresson: Le Grand Jeu (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France and Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, 2020), p. 112

Anne de Mondenard and Agnès Sire, eds., Henri Cartier-Bresson: Paris Revisited (London, 2021), p. 101

Revered French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson distills the soul of Paris into Rue Mouffetard. One of Cartier-Bresson’s most iconic images, he focuses on a young Parisian boy, hardly big enough to carry large bottles of wine, beaming with pride. This vignette, among others in Cartier-Bresson’s oeuvre, speaks to his ability to capture colorful scenes of Parisian life. In Vera Feyder’s essay “Henri Cartier-Bresson: Unshootable Views” she links the rise of Cartier-Bresson’s career to the city itself: “Paris is a movable feast, and so is he. As a kindred spirit, Paris gives him her moods–volatile rather than grim–and her sounds: gossip, greasy spoon, gehenna; shrieks and breaking glass” (Henri Cartier-Bresson, A Propos de Paris, p. 11). 

Other prints of Rue Mouffetard are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, the International Center of Photography, New York, and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, among others.