Untitled [Liberated D.P.s watching the interrogation of a stool pigeon, Dessau]

Henri Cartier-Bresson took full advantage of the mobile 35-mm camera, making a career out of photographing l’instant décisif (the decisive moment). He moved through the streets, searching for the right situations to present themselves, and then acted quickly to capture them. Here, Cartier-Bresson bears witness to a dramatic moment during which liberated victims and prisoners of World War Two watch the interrogation of a stool pigeon, another name for an informer. He made the image in a transit camp at Dessau, Germany while working on a film commissioned by the American Office of War Information to document freed people returning homing after the war. An escaped World War Two war prisoner himself, Cartier-Bresson likely empathized with the grim subjects of his photograph.