Henri Cartier-Bresson was a convinced European.
While he traveled all over the world, he also explored Europe extensively. After the Second World War, the continent was a vast field of ruins haunted by rupture and desolation. In the context of the Cold War, the construction of the European Union was one of the major geopolitical issues of the time. After producing numerous photographic series for magazine press in Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Switzerland, and France, Cartier-Bresson wanted to bring them together in a single volume. He did not intend to create a travel book about these countries, as many existed at the time, but rather a portrait of the people who inhabit them. The book was indeed not titled Europe, but The Europeans.

His aim was to show what makes each people of this geographical area unique, while highlighting their shared humanity. Featuring a stunning cover by the Catalan painter Joan Mir., the book was published in 1955 by Verve, as a follow-up to The Decisive Moment. It had never been republished since. The present exhibition brings together some of the most important photographs from the book on the occasion of its reissue.

Curator of the exhibition
Clément Chéroux
Director, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson et Martine Franck created the Fondation in 2023 with the intention to dedicate its spaces not only to photographers of all styles and generations, but also to “painters, sculptors, and draftsmen.” After the exhibition of Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures in 2005, followed three years later by Saul Steinberg’s drawings, the Fondation now renews its commitment to presenting other types of practices by showing the paintings of Romain Bernini. For around twenty years, this French artist, born in 1979, has been developing an impressive body of work situated at the crossroads of figuration and a form of urban esotericism. He captures moments that function as hypotheses. His compositions depict latent situations in which figures in search of meaning embody kinds of living enigmas.

The series of paintings presented here for the first time is inspired by a curious little eighteenth-century book, Giphantie, by Charles Tiphaigne. Guided by a “prefect,” this journey through an imaginary land inhabited by “elemental spirits” belongs to the tradition of utopian tales. It allows its author to criticize the society of his time while giving free rein to his imagination. Published in 1760, this short work is best known for predicting the advent of modern technologies such as the remote transmission of images and sound, surveillance techniques, contact lenses, freeze-dried food, and many others. But above all, it describes—more than half a century before Nicéphore Niépce’s earliest experiments in 1816, and nearly eight decades before the official announcement of Louis Daguerre’s invention in 1839, a method of producing images that already resembles photography, and so we find our way back to it.

Curator of the exhibition
Clément Chéroux
Director, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson