Les Européens [The Europeans]

Les Européens [The Europeans] presents 114 photographs taken between 1950 and 1955. It was a time when Cartier-Bresson was very busy travelling in Europe, mostly on assignment for one magazine or another.

His pictures from Greece, Spain, Ireland, France, Switzerland and Austria appeared in numerous other magazines. Consequently, it is no coincidence that three fifths of the motifs are in vertical format, as Cartier-Bresson always conceptualised for individual pages or covers. However, the photo book is far more than just a side product of this magazine work. To this day, it is a unique visual testimony to the atmosphere and the state of Europe's reconstruction following the war. For Cartier-Bresson, the focus was on people, whom he photographed time and again in everyday situations, whether at work or during free time. He was only marginally interested in well-known sights: they often served as mere backdrop, or disappear into blurriness. The book did not claim to provide a complete inventory, but to this day it offers a vivid portrait of the inhabitants of a continent undergoing profound change.