Cartier-Bresson photos, assumed destroyed, may still exist

Henri Cartier-Bresson’s widow claims that hundreds of damaged photographs, which were supposed to be destroyed, may still exist. The photographs, shot in the 1930s and exhibited at the Louvre in Paris in 1955, were damaged from a water leak at France's National Centre for Contemporary Arts in the 1990s. Cartier-Bresson gave the prints to the French government in 1960 and Franck now accuses the state of negligence in simply throwing them out, which allowed for pilfering, rather than properly destroying them, as the artist suggested. With the recent appearance of prints in auctions and at restorers, Franck thinks more may exist.