'We are passive onlookers in a world that moves perpetually', wrote Henri Cartier-Bresson. From his earliest days as a photographer, Cartier-Bresson roamed the world in his quest to record the people, places and scenery that fascinated him most. Spanning a distinguished career of over sixty years, his photographs are testimony to his extraordinary skill at capturing the spontaneity, the mystery, the humour and the universality of the events that passed before him - images that earned him the reputation as perhaps the greatest photographer of all time.

This book brings together for the first time a collection of photographs taken on two separate visits to Mexico - the first in 1934, just as the young twenty-seven-year-old was embarking on his photographic career, and the second some thirty years later. The dramatic images, preceded by a thought-provoking commentary from Carlos Fuentes, record with brutal accuracy the panorama of everyday life - an execution wall; crowded markets; stark, dusty landscapes; children playing in alleys - a unique record of a country and its people that includes some of the most famous and powerful photographic images of the twentieth century.