In the late 1940s, famed French photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson documented the last days of China’s Nationalist government, before Mao Tse-Tung and the communists seized power. True to form, Cartier-Bresson produced striking images of a dramatic historical moment — such as a crowd desperately packed together outside a Shanghai bank, and a group of Nationalist military recruits in Beijing’s Forbidden City. In a sense, Cartier-Bresson could take those photos because he was French. The U.S. had strongly supported the Nationalists and, knowing they were widely reviled, virtually no Americans remained in…
