HISTORY - Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35 mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and conceived of photography as capturing a decisive moment.
BIOGRAPHY (Found on his website) - To tell Henri Cartier-Bresson’s story and to unravel his work is essentially to tell the story of a look. Throughout the 20th century, this roaming, lucid eye has captured the fascination of Africa in the 1920’s, crossed the tragic fortunes of Spanish republicans, accompanied the liberation of Paris, caught a weary Gandhi just hours before his assassination, and witnessed the victory of the communists in China. Henri Cartier-Bresson was also Jean Renoir’s assistant on three major films, an artist who sees himself an artisan but who nevertheless established Magnum, the most prestigious of all photo agencies, and who immortalised his major contemporaries : Mauriac in a state of mystical levitation, Giacometti, Sartre, Faulkner or Camus, and as many more all taken at the decisive moment, all portraits for eternity.
The Decisive Moment - The decisive moment is a concept made popular by the street photographer, photojournalist, and Magnum co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson. The decisive moment refers to capturing an event that is ephemeral and spontaneous, where the image represents the essence of the event itself.
"Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera"
Decisive Moment
Henri Cartier Bresson's Decisive Moment was a group of photographs that were taken within certain times to make the subject perfectly composed within a desired landscape. He would capture people doing certain things at a certain time within a very small time space to create a perfectly composed image without having to move the camera. For this first image he set the camera on top of the stairs and waited for the biker to ride past. At a specific point he decided to capture the image at a specific moment so that the biker was in one third of the frame and also within an empty space in the image. Hence the name of the movement being: "The Decisive Moment" As the rule of thirds is used, we know that the image is well composed. When looking at the image of a biker on a road, my eyes focus on the biker first and the travel to look at the rest of the image. The biker was the thing that caught my eye. I believe this is because of the rule of three as this is what it is designed to do; put a primary focus on a subject within one third of a frame. I don't particularly get any specific feelings or emotions when looking at this image. 
This second image follows the same process. The camera was set in a certain position to capture the moment before the person touched the ground. This image, like the previous image, uses the rule of three as a composition technique. The main focus of the image, being the man, is in the far right third of the image. This makes our eyes hone in on the man when first looking at the image. When looking at this image I get the feeling of joy and happiness. I asked a second party what they felt when looking at this image and they said that they felt like he was trying to escape or run away from something. This proves that there can be many connotations to an image.
This third image is different to the previous two images as the rule of three is not used to make the focus of the image stand out. Instead the focus of the image is in the dead center of the image. This alone makes the image stand out compared to the others. This image is of a shadowed figure who seems to bee running up the stairs. When looking at this image, I get the sense of fear and also feel that the character is running away from something. I again asked somebody else how they felt about the image and they thought that the character was scheming something ans was up to no good. That they were trying to hide from being seen. All of these images rely on time and pick up moments that may not normally be captured, only seen. This therefore make's Bresson's work unique. I personally think that his work is very inspirational and teaches us how to capture memories through the art of photography. 
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