Henri Cartier-Bresson: China 1948–1949, 1958

The first visual chronicle of a little‑known chapter in the career of Henri Cartier‑Bresson — one of the great photographers of the twentieth century. In December 1948, Henri Cartier‑Bresson traveled to China at the request of Life magazine. He wound up staying for ten months and captured some of the most spectacular moments in China’s history: he photographed Beijing in “the last days of the Kuomintang,” and then headed back to Shanghai, where he bore witness to the new regime’s takeover. Then, in 1958, Cartier‑Bresson was one of the first Western photographers to go back to China to record the changes that had taken place over the preceding decade.