In 1937, the Parisian communist newspaper Ce soir sent a 28-year-old would-be filmmaker on an unpromising first assignment. Henri Cartier-Bresson was to take photographs of the British coronation, an event of limited appeal either to Ce soir’s readers or to Cartier-Bresson himself. But on the streets of London, he discovered what would become his signature approach.
Two Brylcreemed lads in their best suits, hoisting their girlfriends on to their shoulders for a better view
He would turn away from the King, the procession, the organised magnificence, and focus solely on the crowds, looking for some fleeting moment in which the meaning of the day was concentrated. As he wrote long after, a photographer’s intuition can find both a geometrical order and a depth of significance in an apparently random fragment of time. ‘In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject.’
The result, newly republished as Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Other Coronation, records the energy and exuberance of the occasion.
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