Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century - Essay Example

Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is undeniably one of the richest and mostremarkable venues of modern and contemporary art. It displays many of the most influential artistic pieces that have become a motivation for people to look at things with much depth and appreciation. While reviewing MoMA’s photo gallery, I was amazed at how the artists pull off the inspiration for their works. With noted visual artists such as the Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo, the Canadian artist Jeff Wall and world-renowned French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, it’s really impressive that their works are basically the product of their inner thoughts, life experiences and mundane encounters of just about everything.

I was particularly moved at how Cartier-Bresson captured the fleeting and mundane moments of everyday life as it appeared in one of his photographs entitled Ireland, taken in 1962. “His work reveals the inner truth of human existence, and…record the situations of the world’s people: ‘I kept tracking the streets, high-strung and eager to snap scene of convincing reality, but mainly I wanted to capture the quintessence of the phenomenon in a single image’” (qtd. in Dickie 44-45). He has indeed the magic of capturing that decisive moment in every action and thus making it more realistic.

Work Cited Dickie, Chris. Photography: The 50 Most Influential Photographers of All Time. New York: Barron’s, 2009. Print.