Henri Cartier-Bresson was perhaps the greatest photographer of the twentieth century. In a career spanning over sixty years, he used his camera as an impassive and neutral third eye to capture the vagaries of human behaviour and to produce some of the most memorable and compelling photographs ever published.

In this impressive biographical study, Jean-Pierre Montier traces Cartier-Bresson's artistic progression from his early training as a painter and draughtsman; he provides a detailed analysis of his most famous images and discusses the various philosophies that informed his work, notably Zen and Surrealism.

Drawing together a remarkable selection of the paintings, sketches, and photographs, this book attempts a serious evaluation, not just of Cartier-Bresson's photojournalism, but of his uvre as a whole.