Europeans

Henri Cartier-Bresson published a photographic collection entitled The Europeans in 1955, a portrait of the postwar continent whose occupants lived among ruins and still bore the mark of hunger. In this new volume of images spanning a period from the late 1920s to the 1970s, the celebrated photographer has surveyed a region whose separate parts have, over the years, begun to take on a "family likeness." Documenting the face of Europe at a time when the boundaries between individual countries appeared to be breaking down, Cartier-Bresson traveled from the Scandinavian shield to the Yugoslavian korst, from the Breton granites to the Irish bogs, scorning frontiers and customs posts and finding fragments of a greater identity that defied the sometimes dangerous pursuit of nationalism. The unity and compassion of his eye are imposed on the infinite diversity of cultures, on the complexity of hills and valleys, on the variety of fields and foliage, and on the jumble of roads and rivers. In both countryside and city, people inhabit the landscape, sometimes alone, a face, a single gaze, but often couples, twin figures, mirrored individuals, linked solitudes. These photographs speak of the same daily ceremony, of the sweet and painful doggedness of people in the ongoing business of living, whether English opera-goers in formal evening wear, Polish priests in alb or cassock, or Abruzzi peasants shrouded in the black of their cloaks and hats.