Cartier-Bresson was an independent French photojournalist and a founding member of the press cooperative Magnum. He was married to a Javanese woman. This will have contributed to his awareness of the developments in Indonesia. During the assumption of power in 1949 Cartier-Bresson took many photographs in Sukarno’s entourage. At the end of that year he published an extensive reportage of the new nation in Life magazine.