Henri Cartier-Bresson first traveled to India in December 1947, taking a 6,888 nautical mile journey by sea from England. Upon arriving, he encountered a newly independent nation whose people were experiencing mounting tensions due to the religiously based partition of India and Pakistan. Amidst this conflict, Cartier-Bresson captured one of his best known images, Srinagar, Kashmir, 1948, (lot 73), which depicts Muslim women praying on Hari Parbal Hill, with the rising sun illuminating the Himalayas.
Most notably, in January 1948, Cartier-Bresson met with Mahatma Gandhi and documented the ceremonial breaking of a six day fast that Gandhi undertook as a call to restore peace. Only ninety minutes after their meeting on January 30, Gandhi was assassinated, and Cartier-Bresson, with his Leica camera, became a witness to history, capturing the immediate sorrow and subsequent proceedings for Gandhi’s cremation and the scattering of his ashes. The nationwide mourning is evocatively rendered in a depiction of Gandhi’s funeral pyre (lot 75). This coverage of Gandhi’s final days catapulted Cartier-Bresson’s status as a premier photojournalist, increasing demand for his pictures from leading publications including LIFE, Harper’s Bazaar, Now, and The New York Times Magazine. Over the course of the next 40 years, Cartier-Bresson continued to return to India, traveling there six times through 1987.