The first compilation of writings by a master of photography.
One of the leading lights in photography of the twentieth century, Henri Cartier-Bresson is also a shrewd observer and critic. His writings on photography and photographers, which have appeared sporadically over the past forty-five years, are gathered here for the first time. Several have never before appeared in English.
"The Mind's Eye" features Cartier-Bresson's famous text on "the decisive moment" as well as his observations on Moscow, Cuba, and China during turbulent times, which ring with the same immediacy and visual intensity that he brings to his photography.
Cartier-Bresson remains as direct and insightful as ever in his writings. His commentary on photographer friends he has known-including Robert Capa, Andre Kertesz, Ernst Haas, and Sarah Moon-reveal the impassioned and compassionate vision for which Cartier-Bresson is beloved.

Reproduced in exquisite black and white, the images in this book range from Henri Cartier-Bresson's earliest work in France, Spain, and Mexico through his postwar travels in Asia, the US, and Russia, and even include landscapes from the 1970s, when he retired his camera to pursue drawing. While his instinct for capturing what he called the decisive moments was unparalleled, as a photojournalist Cartier-Bresson was uniquely concerned with the human impact of historic events. In his photographs of the liberation of France from the Nazis, the death of Gandhi, and the creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Cartier-Bresson focused on the reactions of the crowds rather than the subjects of the events. And while his portraits of Sartre, Giacometti, Faulkner, Capote, and other artists are iconic, he gave equal attention to those forgotten by history: a dead resistance fighter lying on the bank of the Rhine, children playing alongside the Berlin Wall, and a eunuch in Peking's Imperial Court. Divided into six thematic sections, the book presents the photographs in spare double-page spreads. In a handwritten note included at the end of the book, Cartier-Bresson writes, "In order to give meaning to the world, one must feel involved in what one singles out through the viewfinder." His work shows how he has been able to capture the decisive moment with such extreme humility and profound humanity.

Of all the world's major religions, Chinese Buddhism has probably experienced the most traumatic modernization. The establishment of a communist state quickly emerged from the self-contained Manchu Empire. The consequences are described in this book. Holmes Welch offers the first detailed account of the careers of recent Buddhist leaders and of the diverse organization they started. Eighteen Chinese Buddhist associations are identified as the author traces the struggle for national leadership. The role of T'ai-hsu, the leader best known to Western readers but not, it is shown, among Buddhists, is given a controversial reassessment. After examining the main features of the revival, Welch puts them into a larger political framework. In the process, he offers copious evidence that our picture of Chinese Buddhism has been distorted. What has been termed a "revival" was actually a secular reorientation. The author's conclusion is that this secularization, vigorous as it was, in reality foreshadowed the decline of Chinese Buddhism as a living religion.

In a 1963 novel, Edna Ferber compared the city of Galveston to Miss Havisham, the grey, mournful abandoned bride of Dickens' Great Expectations. A thriving port city in the nineteenth century, Galveston suffered catastrophe in the twentieth as a deadly hurricane and shifting economics dropped a pall over its waterfront and Victorian mansions. Originally conceived as a requiem for the faded city, The Galveston That Was (developed by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and funded by Jean and Dominique de Menil) instead helped resurrect the city. Architect-author Howard Barnstone, renowned portrait photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, and architect-photographer Ezra Stoller captured the soul of the city in The Galveston That Was and as a result, inspired a major and successful effort to restore Galveston's historic architectural treasures. Many of the buildings pictured in the book have since been restored, and the pace of demolition slowed dramatically after the book's initial publication. In 1994, Rice University Press, in collaboration with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and George and Cynthia Mitchell, published an updated edition of the book. This printing of the book, now under the Texas A&M University Press imprint, contains the text annotations and updates, plus Peter H. Brink's afterword, that were added to the 1994 edition.