Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation

The Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, known as Fondation HCB, is a private non-profit art gallery in Paris dedicated to preserving and exhibiting the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck, while also presenting work by other photographers, painters, sculptors, and illustrators. Founded in 2003 in the Montparnasse district, it moved in 2018 to the Marais neighborhood in the 3rd arrondissement. It holds the distinction of being the first institution created by a living photographer for the conservation and dissemination of his own work, and it plays a significant role in Paris's landscape of photography institutions that expanded at the turn of the 2000s.

In the late 1990s, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck began considering the creation of an institution to safeguard and promote their work. Their daughter Mélanie Cartier-Bresson worked actively with Franck to establish the Foundation, which received recognition of public utility by decree before even opening to the public, published in the Journal Officiel on March 11, 2002. The Foundation was inaugurated on April 29, 2003, with notable attendees including Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë and Minister of Culture Jean-Jacques Aillagon, and opened to the public on May 2, 2003. Martine Franck served as its first president from 2003 until her death in 2012. From 2003 to 2018, Agnès Sire served as director; in November 2017 she became artistic director, with François Hébel appointed as director. Kristen van Riel succeeded Franck as president from 2012 to 2019, followed by Serge Toubiana from 2019 onward. The Foundation drew approximately 100,000 visitors annually during its Montparnasse period. The move to new premises in 2018 was partially financed by an auction of one hundred vintage prints from duplicate holdings, held at Christie's on November 11, 2011.

The Foundation's core mission encompasses three principal activities: conserving the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck, promoting their dissemination, and discovering other photographers of humanist sensibility. The archives comprise over 50,000 prints and 200,000 negatives, along with extensive documentary material. Prior to 2018, these archives were scattered across four separate sites; the 2018 relocation allowed for their consolidation in a single location. The Foundation manages loans of photographs and archives to museums worldwide, facilitates researcher access through the Martine Franck Research Library, and serves as the sole authorized body for authenticating Cartier-Bresson's works and issuing certificates of authenticity. It also monitors the market to distinguish original prints from diverted or counterfeit ones. Reproduction requests for Cartier-Bresson's photographs are handled by Magnum Photos, the agency he co-founded in 1947.

Henri Cartier-Bresson donated his personal collection of his own photographs to the Foundation. The inaugural exhibition in 2003, Les chois d'Henri Cartier-Bresson, presented a selection of works by eighty-three photographers who had particularly influenced him. The Foundation's inaugural exhibition at the Rue des Archives venue in November 2018 was Martine Franck, A Retrospective, which subsequently toured to the Musée de l'Élysée in Switzerland and Fotomuseum Antwerp in Belgium. The Foundation also presents contemporary work, as evidenced by the 2015 exhibition Pieter Hugo: Kin. Every two years, the Foundation awards the HCB Award, endowed with 30,000 euros; the 2021 winner was Carolyn Drake for her project Centaur (working title).

The Foundation originally occupied a renovated 19th-century building at 2 Impasse Lebouis in the Montparnasse district of the 14th arrondissement, a 1913 building designed by architect Émile Molinié and classified as a historical monument since 1982. This former artist's studio had earlier housed the editorial offices of the magazine Actuel in the early 1970s. The space soon proved too confined for the full photographic archives. In summer 2018, the Foundation relocated to 79 Rue des Archives in the Marais district of the 3rd arrondissement. The new premises, inaugurated on November 6, 2018, occupy a former garage rehabilitated by the architectural firm Lobjoy-Bouvier-Boisseau, with exhibition and conservation spaces fitted out by the agency Novo. The new building offers significantly more exhibition and archive space than the previous location, allowing the Foundation to increase its annual exhibitions from three to four. The street-level space improves accessibility for the general public, school groups, and visitors with reduced mobility, while meeting optimal conservation conditions. The additional space also accommodates a bookshop offering photography publications and a new educational room available to associations, schools, and partners.