CARTIER-BRESSON, Henri.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Beautiful Jaipur. First edition, first printing, with the fragile dust jacket, of Cartier-Bresson's first book, a richly illustrated advertisement for the new nation. The 64 photographs depict the city's architecture, people, art, and landscape, seeking "no posing, no sentimentality but deepest emotion" (p. [3]). Already an uncommon book, Beautiful Jaipur is particularly scarce with the jacket, this being only the second such example we have handled.Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) first visited Jaipur in 1948 for the marriage of Princess Premkumari Sahiba. His photographs were so flattering that the Information Bureau asked him to create the present volume, which was formally commissioned by the Times of India in a run of 2,000 copies. This is Cartier-Bresson's only work to be published before The Decisive Moment (1952), with the exception of his MoMA catalogues. It opens with an introduction to the photographer, writing that "He uses a powerful lens and the fastest film and is concerned with technique only in so far as it enables him to rise above it... He pictures life as it manifests itself in all the streets of big cities, the quiet by-lanes and the fanatic ruins of our war torn world. It is a true history of the people of our time" (p. [3]). The book continues with a vivid description of Jaipur by Max Olivier, President of the Foreign Journalists Association of New Delhi. The captions, also contributed by Olivier, praise the city in glowing terms: "What place on earth

• Printing: first

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