Books by Agnès Sire
An Inner Silence: The Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson
“These masterful photos blend the spontaneity of a great snapshot with the highly organized composition of a classical painting.”―Publishers Weekly Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) was perhaps the finest and most influential image maker of the twentieth century, and his portraits are among his best-known work. Over a fifty-year period, he photographed some of the most eminent personalities of the era, as well as ordinary people, chosen as subjects because of their striking and unusual features.
Originally published to coincide with an exhibition at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, this book features both well-known images and previously unpublished portraits: Ezra Pound, Andre´ Breton, Martin Luther King, Samuel Beckett, Truman Capote, Susan Sontag, Carl Jung, William Faulkner, Marilyn Monroe, Henri Matisse, and many more.
Each photograph was chosen because it perfectly embodies Cartier-Bresson’s description of what he was attempting to communicate in his work: “Above all I look for an inner silence. I seek to translate the personality and not an expression.” The portraits reproduced here―discreet, without artifice―confirm once more the singular gift of Cartier-Bresson, who instinctively knew in which revealing fraction of a second to click the shutter. 97 tritone photographs
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Henri Cartier-Bresson: Paris Revisited
by Agnès Sire, Peter Galassi, Ann de Mondenard
This remarkable book explores the key role Paris played in Henri Cartier-Bresson’s legendary artistic career, and the way he looked at the city he lived in―and loved.
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) was "the eye of the 20th century" and one of the world’s most acclaimed photographers. Paris was his home, on and off, for most of his life and the photographs he took of the city and its people are some of his most recognizable and beloved images.
In this volume are 160 photographs taken from a career lasting more than fifty years. Mostly in black and white, this selection reveals the strong influence of pioneering documentary photographer Eugène Atget (1857–1927) on Cartier-Bresson, and the clear visual links with surrealism that infused his early pictures. After an apprenticeship with cubist painter André Lhote in 1932, Cartier-Bresson bought his first Leica, a small portable camera that allowed him to capture the movement and rhythms of daily life in Paris. Camera in hand, Cartier-Bresson observed the Liberation from the Nazis in August 1944 from close quarters and the civil disturbances of May 1968. For decades he also thrived in capturing native Parisians going about their lives in the city, as well as photographing celebrated artists, writers, politicians, and anonymous citizens.
This collection is not only a superb portrait of Paris in the twentieth century, but a testament to Cartier-Bresson’s skill as a supreme observer of human life. 180 illustrations
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Sergio Larrain: London
by Roberto Bolano, Agnès Sire, Sergio Larrain
In this new edition of London, including previously unpublished photographs and visual references, Sergio Larrain presents a powerful portrait of a city on the brink of a new era.
In the winter of 1958, Sergio Larrain traveled to London. He spent just a few months there, photographing subjects that interested him and embracing the shadows of the city. In the cold and damp, his images captured a tangible darkness in which he could “materialize that world of phantoms.” A few years later, he joined Magnum Photos and set off around the world, before retiring to the Chilean countryside and leaving photography behind.
The book also features a text by the late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño―written in 1999 specifically to accompany these images―as well as a new essay by Agnès Sire, artistic director of Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, detailing Larrain’s stay in London.
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