I almost missed the MoMA's exhibition of Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographs at its top floor. At first glance — unlike Irving Penn and Richard Avedon — the pictures did not have an immediate hold on me. But when I approached them, just as with paintings, I became transfixed.
There is a magnetic quality to the images, which appear frozen in motion even if the subjects are in repose. I fell in love with the richness of life that Bresson captured in his photographs, the personality that he prodded from his portraits.
They do not require any words (except of course their titles). Here are scans from the book that was released with the show: Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century.
