Henri Cartier-Bresson coined the concept of “the decisive moment” and spent fifty years proving it existed. He photographed Gandhi hours before his assassination, documented the fall of the Kuomintang in China, and captured ordinary life with a precision that made every frame feel inevitable.

This episode traces Cartier-Bresson from his wealthy French childhood through his capture as a POW, his co-founding of Magnum Photos, and his late-life decision to abandon photography for drawing.

• He co-founded Magnum Photos in 1947, the most influential photo agency in history
• He photographed Gandhi just hours before his assassination in 1948
• He was held as a prisoner of war for three years and escaped on his third attempt
• He abandoned photography entirely in the 1970s and spent his final decades drawing