William Faulkner

Trained as a painter, Cartier-Bresson began his formal photography career in France in the early 1930s. He became one of the first photographers to shoot in the 35mm format with a Leica camera. His concept of the “decisive moment” defined as “the simultaneous recognition…ofthe significance of an event as well as a precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression” set a standard for photography that influenced generations. Using his tiny handheld camera, Cartier-Bresson developed a “street photography” style of discreetly entering a crowd to take pictures. His camera allowed for thirty-six negatives, each approximately 1 x 1 in. in size to be taken on a single loading of film. The small negative made it possible to take many exposures in rapid succession. Cartier-Bresson printed the entire negative, never cropping or editing the image. He prints display a rich range of middle grays with accents of black and white.

Cartier-Bresson described portraiture as “the one domain which photography has won away from painting.” In his portrait of William Faulkner, Cartier-Bresson captured the presence and stature of one of America’s most influential writers of the twentieth century. The portrait, taken at Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s Oxford, Mississippi, home, shows the author with arms crossed over his chest staring intently to the right while his two terriers look eagerly to the left. The year before Cartier-Bresson took this portrait of Faulkner, he had his own portrait taken by Beaumont Newhall, an influential writer and photographer who in 1937 curated the first comprehensive retrospective of photography for the Museum of Modem Art. Ten years after that pivotal exhibition, Cartier-Bresson celebrated a career retrospective at the Museum of Modem Art and the accompanying catalog for the exhibition was authored by Beaumont Newhall.

In the 1950s, Duncan and Marjorie Phillips met Cartier-Bresson during one of the artist’s visits to the museum. Upon Marjorie’s request, Cartier-Bresson took a portrait of the Phillips family. In 1964, the museum hosted the loan exhibition Photographs by Cartier-Bresson which presented works from the artist’s private collection. The Phillipses purchased five photographs from the exhibition, including several portraits of artists represented in the collection.