The Hasselblad award was presented for the third time on Monday 22 November 1982. The award winner, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, received the award from Her Royal Highness Princess Lilian, at a ceremony at theCentre Culturel Suédois in Paris. The award sum was FRF 150,000, and the award winner donated half the award sum to Amnesty International in Sweden.
No citation or press release were published in 1982. Below is a summary about Henri Cartier-Bresson published in the Hasselblad Center’s exhibition catalogue “Nine Masters of Photography”.
Henri Cartier-Bresson has had a decisive influence on creative documentary photography for half a century. Several generations of photographers have been influenced by his work. He is an undisputed master with a vast oeuvre. He was the first photographer to master the art of recording reality in constant flux, and shaping the immediate into detailed and austere photographic compositions. For Cartier-Bresson, photography is a way of narrating stories about life. He sees a photograph as a document, photography as a documentary art. In 1947 Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, David Seymour and others founded the famous co-operative photo agency Magnum.
