Henri Cartier-Bresson

A first edition of Les Européens by Henri Cartier-Bresson.

• Henri Cartier-Bresson (French).
• Paris: Éditions Verve, 1955.
• Large quarto.
• 136 pages.
• Black and white photographs printed in gravure by Draeger.
• Text is in French, by Cartier-Bresson.
• Design by Tériade and Marguerite Lang.
• In presentation dust-jacket.
• Bound in printed paper-covered boards illustrated after a design by Joan Miro in yellow, blue, red, and black; in a cream dust-jacket printed in grey.

One of a small number of copies issued in a presentation dust-jacket with the printed name of the recipient, this example designated ‘à Monsieur Roger Loubry, européen...’ Roger Loubry was chief pilot, captain, and co-founder of the airline Union Aéromaritime de Transport (UAT). He made the first commercial air link between Paris and New York in 1946 and two years later was pilot for the first non-stop flight between the two cities.

Les Européens is identical in format to Cartier-Bresson’s first book, Images à la Sauvette (1952). Both were published by Tériade (pseud. of Elfstratios Eleftheriades), editor of Minotaure and founder of Verve, who made a number of deluxe books with artists such as Matisse, Miró and Léger.

The photographs in the present work were taken between 1950-5 and show ordinary people going about life in post-war Europe. In his introduction Cartier-Bresson sums up his role as a photojournalist simply by saying ‘I was there and this is how life appeared to me at that moment.’

Roger Loubry (presentation dust-jacket).