From Marilyn Monroe to Luther King: Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson In Porto ♦ Portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Pablo Picasso, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Coco Chanel, or Simone de Beauvoir are some of 121 works by French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson that can be seen at Port Customs. The show, which opens this Thursday and runs until April 12, brings Invicta some of the most iconic images of the founder of Agência Magnum Photos. Secrets From Portugal brings you some of the photographs chosen for the show, curated by Aude Raimbault, spread over this 70-year timeframe and show an intimate side of some of the most famous and loved personalities in the world.
♦ Discover All About Henri Cartier-Bresson‘s Work & Subscribe to Our Newsletter ♦
In 1955, Henri Cartier-Bresson was in Porto and photographed the city. The images became, in a way, a radiograph of the Invicta’s nooks of that time and remained in the collective imagination. These photographs are not, however, the stars of the exhibition that opens this Thursday doors at the Porto Customs Building. Henri Cartier-Bresson: Portraits features 121 works by the French photographer, some from unknown people, many from some of the most outstanding figures of the last century. Marilyn Monroe, Coco Chanel, Pablo Picasso, Simone de Beauvoir, Robert Kennedy, Edith Piaf or Martin Luther King are among those portrayed by Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “eternal” Leica (1908-2004). An authentic twentieth-century biography, based on the book Tête à Tête (1998), produced here by the Portuguese company Art For You, in partnership with the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation.
Marilyn Monroe, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso, Coco Chanel: These are some of the protagonists of the intimate portraits captured by Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Leica, which arrive on Thursday, October 31, at Porto Customs.
Based on the 1998 portrait book Tête à Tête, the Henri Cartier-Bresson: Portraits exhibition features 121 works by the French photographer over 70 years and is designed by the Portuguese company Art For You, in partnership with the Henri Foundation. Cartier-Bresson. A collective memory that “brings together both outstanding personalities of society and anonymous individuals of the historical narrative” and shows the “unique trait of the photographic career of the painter, director and documentary artist”, explains the organization in a statement.
The first images of Tête à Tête were captured in the 1930s, “during which time Henri Cartier-Bresson [also known as HCB] travels through Europe with his friend André Pieyre de Mandiargues,” notes the organization in a statement. “The last portraits were taken at the end of the photographic journey when HCB decides to abandon photography to devote himself to his primary passion: drawing.”
HCB’s visit to Porto is not the focus of the exhibition, but the moment was not forgotten in the exhibition. To this end, Art For You invited photographers Luis Nobre, Pedro Mesquita, André Boto and Diogo Borges to expose their gaze on the city and revisit the nooks that the Cartier-Bresson lens has captured for over six decades. This resulted in 12 images, gathered under the title Portraits – Porto: A Contemporary Look. The value of the sales of these works will be delivered in full to the O Joãozinho Association, which fights to obtain funding for the new Pediatric Ward of the São João Hospital Center. The two exhibitions will remain in Porto Customs until April 12, 2020.
