Henri Cartier-Bresson at Age Ninety-Four: Turning the Lens Inward

[...]when he resembled Balthus, whom he photographed on so many occasions and with whom he had been a close friend, by his looking like the sort of boy in grade school who has to be center stage, whether by being mischievous on the playground or performing in a school play in the way that guarantees his being the focus of attention, I was not the least bit surprised. [...]if we assume that Cartier-Bresson’s return to the statement, time and again, was not because he was insistently revealing a fact, but was in fact his particular way of declaring his emotional truth—which is what I have come to believe, in part because of my own extensive involvement in the West African country of Senegal, with projects for schools and health centers and artists’ residencies there, that have become fundamental to my own life in the time between my writing about Cartier-Bresson for ARTnews fifteen years ago, and today—“I can pass for white” is of unparalleled importance to our understanding of one of the greatest artists ever to use a camera. Hughes was there because he was attracted by the vibrant culture of Mexico—the sense that art is everywhere, that there is visual beauty and power in every food vessel and textile and building façade, the rich mix of the Mayan culture with the Spanish; Henestrosa was there because it was home. “World, please note! I may not be physically large, and you don’t take me to be a prizefighter or footballer, but I am robust and tough, and I go my own way.” [...]in Cartier-Bresson’s case, “I may come from a fancy background, but in fact I am in my soul more a black African than one of those business people in northern France.”