‘Destroyed’ Cartier-Bresson photos ‘sold on black market’

The widow of photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson claims that hundreds of his photographs that were thought to have been destroyed by the French government are still available on the black market.

Martine Franck, herself a renowned photographer and member of the prestigious Magnum Photos agency founded by her husband, accused the French state of negligence over their handling of the 551 images. She revealed that the episode prompted Cartier-Bresson not to leave any more images to the government.

In the autumn of 1955, Cartier-Bresson (above), a founder of modern photo-journalism, held an exhibition in the Louvre, displaying hundreds of photos dating from the 1930s through to post-war pictures taken in Russia, China, India and the United States. In 1960 he bequeathed the collection to the French state, who archived it in the National Centre for Contemporary Arts.

A further selection of images was added to it in 1970 - bringing the total number of pictures in the collection to 551.

But in 1991, when the centre moved its archives from the 16th arrondissement of Paris to La Défense, it was discovered that the prints had been severely damaged by a water leak.

Franck told Le Monde: "Two people from the Culture Ministry asked him if they could have the entire exhibition destroyed. Henri, la mort dans l'âme [with a heavy heart], agreed." Officials were supposed to cut the damaged photographs in half.

But Franck says that batches of prints from this "lost" collection then turned up on the French art market before her husband's death in 2004.

Franck, speaking publicly about the episode for the first time, said the black market sales upset Cartier-Bresson so much that he refused to leave any more of his works to the French state.

The prints were identified by Cartier-Bresson himself as coming from the government collection in 2001. After a formal complaint their sale was blocked and the incident was hushed up. But Franck spoke out this week after reports that other prints from the "lost" collection were being offered for sale.

The government insists that the images on the market must come from another source, but the Cartier-Bresson Foundation, set up in 2004 after the photographer's death at the age of 95, has formally requested a confession that the state did not destroy the damaged prints, but simply threw them away.