Portrait of Henri Cartier-Bresson

Birthday profile

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson, French photographer and painter (died 2004)

Born
August 22, 1908
Died
August 3, 2004
Zodiac sign
Leo
Birth year
1908

About Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French humanist photographer, and also an artist. He was considered a master of candid photography, and was an early user of 35mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography and viewed capturing what he named the decisive moment as the essence of the very best pictures. The two men both had an interest in photography, and Harry presented Henri with his first camera. The Surrealist movement, founded in 1924, was a catalyst for this paradigm shift. Although Cartier-Bresson became frustrated with Lhote's "rule-laden" approach to art, the rigorous theoretical training later helped him identify and resolve problems of artistic form and composition in photography.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Henri Cartier-Bresson was born

Henri Cartier-Bresson was born in 1908. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1908

  • Best-selling book"Mr. Crewe's Career" – Winston Churchill

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentChicago Cubs win World Series
  • Top headlineFord Model T goes on sale — $850
  • Technology milestoneFord Model T — affordable automobile for the masses
  • Defining fadAutomobile craze
  • World population~1.68B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderTheodore Roosevelt
  • U.S. population87.4M

1908 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Henri Cartier-Bresson's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19082026
Population87.4M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Library of Congress, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.