Photographer. He is recognized as one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century. He entered art school in 1927. After studying literature and English at Cambridge University in 1928 to 1929, he began his photography career in 1931 with a trip to French colonial Africa, where he nearly died from Blackwater Fever. Only seven photographs from a Brownie Camera survived from this trip. After touring Europe, his photographs of this tour were first exhibited at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1933, and subsequently at the Ateneo Club in Madrid. Purchasing a 55-millimeter Leica camera in 1933, he was part of a photographic expedition to Mexico the next year. In 1935 he traveled to the United States, where he accepted an assignment to photograph fashion models for the magazine "Harper's Bazaar." This was his first assignment for a magazine. While in New York, he studied cinematography with Paul Strand. He made a documentary, "Return to Life", in 1937. The same year, his first photojournalist assignment was the coronation of King George VI for the French magazine "Regards." During World War II, he was drafted in 1940, serving in the film and photo unit of the French army. Six months later, he was taken prisoner by Nazi Forces. As a prisoner-of-war, he was a forced laborer. After three years of imprisonment, he escaped on his third attempt and began working for the French underground. Starting in 1943, he made series of portraits of artists, including Matisse, Bonnard, and Braque. From the 1920s, he developed a hobby of oil painting. Through 1944 and 1945, he photographed the Nazi occupation of France through the liberation of his homeland. Joining with his long-time colleagues Robert Capa and David Seymour or "Chim", plus George Rodger, the four photographers founded in 1947 "Magnum", an agency that provides photographs by freelance photographers to international publications. Magnum was the first agency of this kind, and the successful business consumed much time managing it. In 1954 his partner Capa was killed while on assignment in Vietnam and in 1956 Chim was killed while covering the Arab-Israeli war. After thirty years of traveling to many countries world-wide on assignment mainly for "Life" magazine, he became the first Western photographer to photograph "freely" in the post-war Soviet Union. He published "The Europeans and People of Moscow" in 1955. In 1966 he left Magnum, which remained his agent, and devoted himself to drawing. In 1974, he retired. Among his honors and awards, he received the Overseas Press Club Award four times; the American Society of Magazine Photographers award in 1953; and the Prix de la Société Française de Photographie in 1959. Besides his collection of photographs, "The Europeans and People of Moscow," his nearly fifty publications include his first publication, "The Photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson" in 1947; "From One China to Another" in 1954; "The Face of Asia" in 1972; and "The Decisive Moment" in 1973. His books are published in several languages. In 1937 he married Ratna "Elie" Mohini, a dancer from Java. Their marriage ended in divorce thirty years later. His second marriage in 1970 was to photographer, Martine Franck, and the couple had a daughter.