The Decisive Moment

　　這本在攝影史上極負盛名的書，收錄布列松早期最佳作品，最初在1952年巴黎出版時，由馬蒂斯設計書封。書中影像深深影響好幾代的攝影師，成為好幾代人的共同記憶。這本復刻版，完美重現當年缺絕版本，還多附贈介紹本書歷史的小冊子。
 
　　The Decisive Moment—originally called Images à la Sauvette— is one of the most famous books in the history of photography, assembling Cartier-Bresson’s best work from his early years. Published in 1952 by Simon and Schuster, New York, in collaboration with Editions Verve, Paris, it was lavishly embellished with a collage cover by Henri Matisse.
The book and its images have since influenced generations of photographers. Its English title has defined the notion of the famous formal peak in which all elements in the photographic frame accumulate to form the perfect image. Paired with the artist’s humanist viewpoint, Cartier-Bresson’s photography has become part of the world’s collective memory.

　　This new publication is a meticulous facsimile of the original book. It comes with an additional booklet containing an essay on the history of The Decisive Moment by Centre Pompidou curator Clément Chéroux.
 
　　I, like many another boy, burst into the world of photography with a Box Brownie, which I used for taking holiday snapshots. Even as a child, I had a passion for painting, which I ‛did’ on Thursdays and Sundays, the days when French school children don’t have to go to school. Gradually, I set myself to try to discover the various ways in which I could play with a camera. From the moment that I began to use the camera and to think about it, however, there was an end to holiday snaps and silly pictures of my friends. I became serious. I was on the scent of something, and I was busy smelling it out.

　　Henri Cartier-Bresson
 

作者簡介
 
　　Henri Cartier-Bresson was born in Chanteloup-en-Brie in 1908. He initially studied painting and began photographing in the 1930s. Cartier-Bresson co-founded Magnum in 1947 and subsequently travelled extensively. In the late 1960s he returned to his original passion, drawing. In 2003 Cartier-Bresson established the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, one year before his death.