“It is through living that we discover ourselves, at the same time as we discover the world around us.”
—Cartier-Bresson, 1952

Born when the automobile and the airplane were still in their infancy, Cartier-Bresson never lost his affection for old traditions, yet he also did not shrink from change. For him modernity arrived in the 1950s, with the triumph of consumption and leisure, and his later pictures fluently describe its vulgar depredations, messy accumulations, and sprawling hedonism.

_{Henri Cartier-Bresson. World's Fair, Brussels, Belgium, 1958. Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris. © 2010 Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos, courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson.}