Curator, Peter Galassi: These French ladies and their marvelous dog are in the little French village of Aubenas. And they are listening to a speech by Charles de Gaulle, the hero of the French in World War II and then their President from 1958.
Cartier-Bresson had the most wonderful strategy of photographing political events. It goes back to one of his early newspaper assignments, to photograph the coronation of George VI in London in 1937. And the wonderful pictures that he brought back from that don't show George VI at all, or any of the procession of the coronation parade, or anything else.
What they do show is the spectators. And so the entire national character that is so completely devoted to their monarchy is captured in these pictures of the crowd. And here, the sense that these women, they're listening to their great national hero. But they certainly are not going to be persuaded until he really persuades them. The dog is more easily persuaded.