Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/08/04

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Subject: [Leica] Henri Cartier-Bresson passes at age 95
From: pklein at 2alpha.net (Peter Klein)
Date: Wed Aug 4 20:37:06 2004

It was around 1969.  I was 15.  I often frequented my town library after 
school.  One of my favorite pastimes was to gather a stack of Baroque 
records, put on a pair of headphones, and spend the afternoon listening to 
the music and reading books about classical music or photography.

It was a good library, with many photo books.  They subscribed to Camera 
35, which was several cuts above Popular Photography and Modern 
Photography, and even those were nowhere near as bad as most photo 
magazines are now.  I devoured Life Magazine from the 1930s 
onward.  Somewhere along the line, I discovered that I had a special 
affection for photographs of people being themselves, especially if they 
were taken by a couple of guys named Eisenstadt and Cartier-Bresson.  I 
wanted to take pictures like that.

That was a long time ago.  I've learned, read and seen much since 
then.  But fixed in my mind is that decisive moment when I picked up a book 
by the same name, immersed myself in it, and my world changed.

Merci, cher Henri.  A bientot.

--Peter Klein
Seattle, WA