| Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation | |
| Native Name: | Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson |
| Logo Alt: | Logo of the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation |
| Map Type: | Paris |
| Coordinates: | 48.8629°N 2.3601°W |
| Former Names: | --> |
| Location: | Rue des Archives, 75003 Paris |
| Collections: | Henri Cartier-Bresson, Martine Franck |
| Founder: | Henri Cartier-Bresson, Martine Franck, Mélanie Cartier-Bresson |
| Director: | François Hébel[1] |
| Car Park: | --> |
| Nrhp: | --> |
The Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation (French: Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson), also known as Fondation HCB, is an art gallery and non-profit organisation in Paris that was established to preserve and show the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck, and show the work of others. It was set up in 2003 by the photographer and painter Cartier-Bresson, his wife, also a photographer, Franck, and their daughter, Mélanie Cartier-Bresson.
The Foundation hosts four solo exhibitions per year by a variety of photographers, painters, sculptors, and illustrators. Agnès Sire is its artistic director and François Hébel its director.[2] [3]
The Foundation's mission is to preserve the archives of Henri Cartier-Bresson[4] and Martine Franck, and show their work and the work of others.[5] [6] It also exists to help researchers and curators to work with those archives.[5]
The Foundation hosts four solo exhibitions per year by a variety of photographers, painters, sculptors, and illustrators.[5]
The inaugural exhibition at the Rue des Archives venue, in November 2018, was Martine Franck – A Retrospective, which then toured to Musée de l'Élysée in Switzerland, and Fotomuseum Antwerp in Belgium.[7] [8] [9] [10]
Cartier-Bresson and Franck's archives consist of over 50,000 prints and 200,000 negatives,[11] as well as all kinds of documents.[12] Prior to 2018, the archives were scattered over four sites,[13] but since then they have all been housed in the new building.[11]
The Foundation was set up by Cartier-Bresson, Franck and Mélanie Cartier-Bresson.[4] Cartier-Bresson gave his personal collection of his photographs to the Foundation.[4] It opened in 2003 in a renovated 19th-century building at 2 Impasse Lebouis in the Montparnasse district of Paris.[2] [4] Between 2003 and 2018 it had 100,000 visitors a year.[6]
In November 2018 it moved to 79 Rue des Archives, in the Marais district of Paris;[6] [14] a tall, narrow atelier in a 1913 building.[15] The new building has significantly more exhibition and archive space than the previous, allowing for four exhibitions a year instead of three.[2]
The non-profit Foundation is privately funded.[5] A proportion of funds come from an endowment left by Franck, who died in 2012.[2]
From 2003 Agnès Sire was its director.[16] In November 2017 Sire became artistic director and François Hébel was appointed as director.[2] [16] [17]
The Foundation issues the HCB Award.[5] [18]