Les Européens.

In a presentation dust-jacket. One of a small number of copies issued in a presentation dust-jacket with the printed name of the recipient, this example designated 'à Monsieur Roger Loubry, européen...' Roger Loubry was chief pilot, captain, and co-founder of the airline Union Aéromaritime de Transport (UAT). He made the first commercial air link between Paris and New York in 1946 and two years later was pilot for the first non-stop flight between the two cities.

Les Européens is identical in format to Cartier-Bresson's first book, Images à la Sauvette (1952). Both were published by Tériade (pseud. of Elfstratios Eleftheriades), editor of Minotaure and founder of Verve, who made a number of deluxe books with artists such as Matisse, Miró and Léger. The photographs in the present work were taken between 1950-5 and show ordinary people going about life in post-war Europe. In his introduction Cartier-Bresson sums up his role as a photojournalist simply by saying 'I was there and this is how life appeared to me at that moment.'

First edition; large 4to (359 x 270 mm, 14¼ x 10¾ in); black & white photographs printed in gravure by Draeger, text by Cartier-Bresson, design by Tériade and Marguerite Lang; printed paper-covered boards illustrated after a design by Joan Miro in yellow, blue, red, and black, minor shelfwear, cream dust-jacket printed in grey, lightly rubbed, short tear to upper flap-fold with archival strengthening, fine in an excellent example of the scarce dust-jacket; [136]pp.