BERLIN WALL 1962 PHOTO:HENRI CARTIER-BRESSONI do not know if you will remember, but shortly after starting the blog I published an article titled: "Henri Cartier-Bresson and the mystery of the missing picture”. I explained that in one of the first books I bought from Cartier-Bresson there was a photo of children playing near the Berlin Wall that became one of my favorites but I did not see it anymore, in any book or in any other HCH’s exhibition or retrospective. And I ventured some of the reasons why it believed that Cartier-Bresson had "disowned" the picture that I loved. A few weeks ago I received an e-mail that revealed the mystery. It was from Josep Martínez-Valls and said:
I am a friend of Toni Catany and we have met several times in Colectania and elsewhere. I gave you a portrait of Toni and you that I took, "à la sauvette".
I just wanted to comment you that I stumbled on your blog and I found your comment about the photo of children playing under the Berlin wall ... Monsieur Henri preferred the anonymity of children. So he only published another shot in which they are perched on the wall, their backs to the camera, and only in the distance, approaching blurred by flou, the third child. Just in my collection of Cartier-Bresson (one hundred original), I have the one you said, as a vintage antique original, although it was not signed. And the other two most famous masterpieces of the wall that you commented.
For the same reason, HCB did not want that the famous photo of the child with the bottle of wine on her street of Rue Mouffetard was published too much. It turns out that he found the former kid (M. Michel Gabriel), when it was fifty years ...
BERLIN WALL 1962 PHOTO.HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON
BERLIN WALL 1962 PHOTO.HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON
I am a friend of Toni Catany and we have met several times in Colectania and elsewhere. I gave you a portrait of Toni and you that I took, "à la sauvette".
I just wanted to comment you that I stumbled on your blog and I found your comment about the photo of children playing under the Berlin wall ... Monsieur Henri preferred the anonymity of children. So he only published another shot in which they are perched on the wall, their backs to the camera, and only in the distance, approaching blurred by flou, the third child. Just in my collection of Cartier-Bresson (one hundred original), I have the one you said, as a vintage antique original, although it was not signed. And the other two most famous masterpieces of the wall that you commented.
For the same reason, HCB did not want that the famous photo of the child with the bottle of wine on her street of Rue Mouffetard was published too much. It turns out that he found the former kid (M. Michel Gabriel), when it was fifty years ...
BERLIN WALL 1962 PHOTO.HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON
BERLIN WALL 1962 PHOTO.HENRI CARTIER-BRESSONJosep also sent me a picture of two of the originals in his collection and says that on the poster of the child with the bottles, HCB wrote: "These bottles only contain rainwater ... Henri", whereas in the other photo, which is of Joan Colom, he wrote in Catalan: "doncs, a la meva bottle, hi ha vi negre" (in my bottle there is red wine). "
DE LA COLECCIÓN DE JOSEP MARTINEZ
DE LA COLECCIÓN DE JOSEP MARTINEZ
It seems that finally, the mystery of "the missing picture" has been solved. Many thanks Josep.
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