Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Vision of Matera

Henri Cartier-Bresson first arrived in the Italian city of Matera in 1951, commissioned to photograph the historic locale by Italian authorities. His aim was to capture Lucania, the area of Southern Italy where Matera is located, and famously depicted in the paintings of Italian artists Carlo Levi and Rocco Scotellaro. Cartier-Bresson created a comprehensive portrait of the region, photographing Matera itself as well as nearby Potenza, and their respective satellite towns.

In 1985 Cartier-Bresson donated his images of Matera to the Italian city. The collection comprises images made over two time periods: 1951-’52 and 1972-’73. Carmela Biscaglia is the Director of the Documentation Center Rocco Scotellaro and Basilicata, which records post-war life in the region. Below, in light of Matera’s status as European City of Culture for 2019, we republish her words from the original catalogue that marked this important acquisition.

It all began with a donation made by Henri Cartier-Bresson to the Comune of Tricarico (Matera) in 1985, through his friend Rocco Mazzarone, in the memory of Rocco Scotellaro, a young poet Cartier-Bresson met on his first visit to Lucania but who died prematurely in 1953.

The Foundation has 26 photographs that not only hold a significant position in the 20th century photographic panorama of Lucania, but which are images taken by Cartier-Bresson in 1951 to 52, and in 1972 to 73, two critical phases in the region’s 20th century history. They are accompanied by a commentary by Mazzarone himself, the intellectual and doctor with a profound knowledge of Lucania, who accompanied the French photographer during his visits to the region. The correspondence between the pair is testament to their deep friendship. This was a crucial link for Cartier-Bresson to break into that world, in keeping with his belief that “whether you move or stay put, you need establish yourself, you need to build close relationships, supported by the community in which you find yourself”. Cartier-Bresson viewed photography as an experience that, by investigating the values of existence, allowed for a fusion between oneself and others. In his own words, “It is by living that we discover ourselves, in the same moment that we discover the outside world”.

However, as we can see from the Lucania images, the artist did not renounce his “affectionate curiosity for the timeless models of human behaviour and their various incarnations, which are always unique”. His emotional involvement when he came into contact with poverty in Lucania was significant, to the point that on July 6th 1974, he put aside his reporter’s scientific detachment and wrote to his friend Mazzarone, «me lasse une tristesse, car me sens si attaché au pays et aux gens que nous avons connu» [“leaves me sad, because I feel so attached to the country and the people we have met”]. Upon his return to Lucania twenty years later (twenty years that were marked by the gulf between the last phase of subsistence living and the problems involved with nascent industrialisation), Henri Cartier-Bresson uses his second reportage to a social and economic reality that had been changed beyond recognition.

There were new industrial areas in the Basento valley, where methane deposits had been discovered, vast areas of swampland around Metaponto had been cleared, malaria had been eradicated and irrigation systems put in place that would pave the way for profitable and highly specialised farming. The photographer created a comprehensive panorama of the region: of Matera and its surrounding towns of Stigliano, Ferrandina, Aliano, Craco, Pisticci, Scanzano, Sant’Arcangelo and Grassano, of Potenza and the towns of Rionero in Vulture, Acerenza, Tolve, Vietri di Potenza, Pietragalla, and Avigliano.

He captured the lives of people in these towns and the countryside, the work of the ancient manor farms and the modern smallholdings in Val d’Agri, the new farming methods in and around Metaponto, the widespread cultural debate within the ancient libraries, the new realities for young and old, whilst taking in the transformations brought about by factories, viaducts and cement dykes and bridges – think of the image of the bridge in Potenza, designed by Sergio Musmeci, to connect the city to its industrial estate. They worked holistically, showing the region a way out of dignified, cave-dwelling poverty and a subsistence economy along the stark ravines of Pisticci and Aliano, towards the new opportunities offered by industry and the modernisation of farming.

With the lens of his Leica trained on the conflict between old and new, men and women, rich and poor, the powerful and the weak, individuals and groups, groups and crowds, without ever betraying his ability to penetrate the soul of the individual, Cartier-Bresson captured the contrast between ancient and new traditions in Basilicata, the combination of Pagan myths and Christian traditions, archaic work tools alongside electrical appliances – that of the plough and the donkey, the faithful companion of the peasant’s hard work, and the tractor and motor car of the returning immigrant. The great photographer did not fail to capture the new masses of young men, whose aspirations for work were not met and who were readying themselves for a new exodus, or the ruling class that continued to distribute favours, weak trade unions and political parties who were nothing but, in the words of Rocco Mazzarone, “groups of families and migrant clientele”, from the moment big decisions continued to be taken elsewhere.

Excerpted from the exhibition catalogue of La Lucania di Henri Cartier-Bresson: immagini di una terra ritrovata, Milan (2015).