De haut en bas : Pont de l'Europe, Paris, 1932 Gitans, Grenade, Espagne, 1933 Paris, 1955 Bal de la Reine Charlotte, Londres, 1959 Le mur, Berlin, ex-RFA, 1962

15 April - 30 August 2009 (To take photographs is to put the head, the eye and the heart in the same line of sight. It’s a way of life). Presented to coincide with the centenary of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s birth, this exhibition showcases 340 photographs from the collection of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie. This collection has been built up around two key themes: ‘Paris’ and ‘Europeans’. The Paris theme is the result of years of work on Cartier-Bresson’s archives. From 1980 to 1984, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Daniel Arnault from Magnum, and Jean-Luc Monterosso selected a corpus of images of Paris. This set of pictures was displayed in an exhibition, “Paris à vue d’œil”, at the Musée Carnavalet during the Paris Month of Photography in November 1984. For the theme of ‘Europeans’, echoing the book with the same title designed by Tériade in 1955, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Maurice Coriat once again dipped into the archives. Presented at the MEP in March 1997, all the prints from this exhibition came from a donation from Reader's Digest France corporate foundation, following a proposal by Jean-Stanislas Retel. These photographs illustrate both a style and a way of working. They embody the perfect, transcendent moment that combines emotion and a razor-sharp eye. As he wrote, “photography is a like guillotine blade that captures the instant from eternity that has dazzled me”. The exhibition is organized in collaboration with the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson and in partnership with le Parisien and France Culture. In parallel with the exhibition at the MEP, from 19 June to 13 September 2009 the Paris Museum of Modern Art presents the reconstitution of an exhibition presented by Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1978. www.henricartierbresson.org