Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1996/10/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Cartier-Bresson, who always used a Leica, was a purist and believed that the "perfect" image captures the "decisive moment" with unedited composition. (Cartier-Bresson is alive, but seldom photographs any more and has turned his artistic focus to drawing). It is is for that reason that almost all of his images are printed with the thin black line around the them --to show that the image was perfectly composed as a full frame image (pretty amazing with the rangefinder of a Leica). One of his most famous images (Behind the Gare St-Lazare) does not have the black line around it because it was shot through a fence, and a portion of the negative shows the fence --out of focus. So it was edited out in printing. In the US, one can obtain Cartier-Bresson images from photography dealers and at auction. He does not print his work, but uses the same person who printing for him for years --at least since the the 1950's. Prices for standard-size images are $3500 for well-known ones and less popular ones are about $2500. Auction prices, interestingly, are frequently higher (shows what the public knows).Vintage work often appears at auction, but the images are generally not well known ones (news photos, etc.) and I think are generally of a lesser quality. Vintage prints of his well known images are very rare.