Henri Cartier-Bresson - Le Grand Jeu

Exhibition Catalogue Henri Cartier-Bresson - Le Grand Jeu, presented at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (May - August 22, 2021).

In the early 1970s, at the request of his friends and collectors John and Dominique Menil, Henri Cartier-Bresson reviewed the thousands of prints from his archives in search of the most important and significant works of his career.

385 photographs thus chosen were printed in his trusted laboratory, in Paris, between 1972 and 1973. To highlight this "Master Set", the photographer Annie Leibovitz, the director Wim Wenders, the writer Javier Cercas, the director of the Department prints and photography from the National Library of France, Sylvie Aubenas, and collector François Pinault have each chosen around fifty images from this unique collection, which until now had never been published in its entirety.

The Big Game is divided into two parts: the first presents the selection of each curator, accompanied by a text written for the occasion; the second, the entire Master Set as designed by Cartier-Bresson.