A pioneer of photojournalism, Henri Cartier-Bresson (born 1908) is best known for his images of life in Europe during the 1930s through the 1950s. His work has long been honored with museum retrospectives, which have served to elevate his street-level imagery to the realm of artistic expression.

Cartier-Bresson was born August 22, 1908 in Chanteloup, France, a rural village not far from Paris where the rivers Seine and Marne meet. In the 1990s it would become part of the parcel of land that comprised the Euro-Disney theme park. Henri was the first of three children in the prosperous Cartier-Bresson household, a home situated on Paris's rue de Lisbonne. His father's family had been in the thread manufacturing business since 1789, but both Cartier-Bresson's great-grandfather and a contemporary uncle were talented artists; even his business-minded father liked to sketch. The family of Cartier-Bresson's mother hailed from Normandy, and they, too, possessed a generations-old...