“Henri Cartier-Bresson”, Martine Franck

A very nice piece from the NYT Lens blog by Mark Bussel on the photography of Martine Franck. She not only is a noted Magnum photographer in her own right but was also married to the great Henri-Cartier Bresson.

( We had forgotten she was the photographer of the famous picture above … Bresson in his later years had all but given up photography and turned to drawing.)

Many of her images show people honoring photographs by studying, gathering and displaying them. "I think I tend to like photographing photographs within photographs," she wrote, "because the passing of time has always been one of my main preoccupations."

I’ve been struck by how often she captures people in the act of looking. Was she was specifically pursuing these moments? Or, because she herself was thinking about seeing, did she subconsciously respond to subjects who were doing the same thing? Her answer to both questions: "No doubt yes."

The article covers some little known aspects of her photographic history and has a very nice gallery of her work.

For more on her story: Lens Blog