Photo of the Week #281

January 22, 2024
In 1968, The Museum of Modern Art presented a solo exhibition devoted to Henri Cartier-Bresson’s then recent photography. The exhibition was organized by MoMA’s legendary photo curator John Szarkowski, and featured approximately 150 prints. This rare, and possibly unique, oversized exhibition print was one of the works which was chosen to be presented in a larger scale.

Bresson shot extensively in Texas in the late 1950s and early 1960s, having been invited in 1957 by John and Dominique de Menil (of the famed Menil Collection) to photograph in Houston, Texas and the surrounding area. Bresson returned to Texas as a locale and subject on several occasions in the following years, making this photograph in 1960, showing two young boys at a circus sideshow, both seeming contemplative beyond their years.

In the exhibition’s press release, Szarkowski described Bresson’s singular ability to create enduring and deeply revealing images from the stuff of everyday life, stating that: "Although [his photographs are] made in the hundredth part of a second, they speak of the character of decades and generations."