Cartier-Bresson was born Aug. 22, 1908, in Chanteloup outside Paris to a wealthy textile family.

The eldest of three children, he was interested mainly in painting. At 20, he turned his back on the lucrative family business to study art.

In 1930, with a box camera, he started dabbling in photography. Two years later, armed with his Leica, he traveled around Europe and West Africa, published photos in magazines and had his first exhibition in Madrid in 1933.

Critics said his most brilliant photograph was "Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare," of a man leaping over a puddle and frozen in mid-air, his V-shaped shadow contrasting with the fence above the railroad tracks.

"Rue Mouffetard," a poignant shot of a grinning youngster carrying two bottles of wine down the Left Bank market street, became one of Cartier-Bresson's most sought-after photos.

At the outbreak of World War II, he was a corporal in a film and photo unit and was quickly taken prisoner. After nearly three years he escaped and made his way back to Paris where he divided his time between commercial photography and transporting ex-prisoners for the French underground.

His pictures emerged as a stunning reportage of the underground resistance and the political drama of postwar Europe. In 1945, under the aegis of the U.S. Office of War Information, Cartier-Bresson directed "The Return," a highly praised documentary on homecoming French POWS.

In 1947, he joined two of the other pre-eminent photographers of the time, Robert Capa and David Seymour, in founding Magnum, a ground-breaking photo agency.

He continued to photograph, but turned away from the camera in the last 25 years of his life to rediscover painting. By 1988, he was spending most days sketching in pencil or charcoal at his Paris home or at his retreat in southern France.

In 1937, Cartier-Bresson married a Javanese dancer, Ratna Mohini. He is survived by Martine Franck, whom he married in 1970, and their daughter, Melanie.