Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes

Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.

As photojournalists, we supply information to a world that is overwhelmed with preoccupations and full of people who need the company of images ... We pass judgement on what we see, and this involves an enormous responsibility.

We must avoid however, snapping away, shooting quickly and without thought, overloading ourselves with unnecessary images that clutter our memory and diminish the clarity of the whole.

Photography is simultaneously and instantaneously the recognition of a fact and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that express and signify that fact

What reinforces the content of a photograph is the sense of rhythm - the relationship between shapes and values.

It is seldom indeed that a composition which was poor when the picture was taken can be improved by reshaping it in the dark room.

The camera can be a machine gun, a warm kiss, a sketchbook. Shooting a camera is like saying, Yes, yes, yes. There is no maybe. All the maybes should go in the trash.

The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.

A photographer must always work with the greatest respect for his subject and in terms of his own point of view.

Think about the photo before and after, never during. The secret is to take your time. You mustn't go too fast. The subject must forget about you. Then, however, you must be very quick.

Thinking should be done beforehand and afterwards - never while actually taking a photograph.

I'm always amused by the idea that certain people have about technique, which translate into an immoderate taste for the sharpness of the image. It is a passion for detail, for perfection, or do they hope to get closer to reality with this trompe I'oeil? They are, by the way, as far away from the real issues as other generations of photographers were when they obscured their subject in soft-focus effects.

Reality offers us such wealth that we must cut some of it out on the spot, simplify. The question is, do we always cut out what we should? ­

I adore shooting photographs. It's like being a hunter. But some hunters are vegetarians - which is my
relationship to photography.

To take photographs is to hold one's breath when all faculties converge in the face of fleeing reality. It is at that moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.
To take photographs means to recognize - simultaneously and within a fraction of a second - both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye, and one's heart on the same axis.

I am neither an economist nor a photographer of monuments, and I am not much of a journalist either. What I am trying to do more than anything else is to observe life.

This recognition, in real life, of a rhythm of surfaces, lines, and values is for me the essence of photography; composition should be a constant of preoccupation, being a simultaneous coalition - an organic coordination of visual elements.

I'm not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It's drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, and then sniff, sniff, sniff - being sensitive to coincidence. You can't go looking for it; you can't want it, or you won't get it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens.

Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience.

Culture shock is often felt sharply at the borders between countries, but sometimes it doesn't hit fully until you've been in a place for a long time.

It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera ... they are made with the eye, heart and head.

The world is being created every minute, and the world is falling to pieces every minute

And no photographs taken with the aid of flash light, either, if only out of respect for the actual light - even when there isn't any of it.

It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.

- How do you make your pictures?
- I don't know, it's not important.

In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a Leitmotiv.

Time runs and flows and only our death succeeds in catching up with it. Photography is a blade which, in eternity, impales the dazzling moment.

If, in making a portrait, you hope to grasp the interior silence of a willing victim, it's very difficult, but you must somehow position the camera between his shirt and his skin. Whereas with pencil drawing, it is up to the artist to have an interior silence.

Your fitsy 10,000 photographs are your worst.

It is through living that we discover ourselves, at the same time as we discover the world around us.

Freedom for me is a strict frame, and inside that frame are all the variations possible.

While we're working, we must be conscious of what we're doing.

Photography is nothing-it's life that interests me.

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.

One eye of the photographer looks wide open through the viewfinder, the other, the closed looks into his own soul.

He made me suddenly realize that photographs could reach eternity through the moment.

I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant.

For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.

The Photography is a chopper which in the eternity seizes the moment which dazzled it.

Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.

Some photographs are like a Chekhov short story or a Maupassant story. They're quick things and there's a whole world in them. But one is unconscious of it while shooting.

It seems dangerous to be a portrait artist who does commissions for clients because everyone wants to be flattered, so they pose in such a way that there's nothing left of truth.

Give me inspiration over information.

The adventurer in me felt obliged to testify with a quicker instrument than a brush to the scars of the world.

Of course it's all luck.

All I care about these days is painting - photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing.

Life is once. Forever.

We must respect the atmosphere which surrounds the human being

It is by great economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.

Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing.

The camera is for us a tool, not a pretty mechanical toy ... people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing.

Pictures should never be posed. They are 'revealed' so must be accepted as they are. Left alone.

Human faces are such a world!

Pictures, regardless of how they are created and recreated, are intended to be looked at. This brings to the forefront not the technology of imaging, which of course is important, but rather what we might call the eyenology (seeing).

It's wonderful to be famous as long as you remain unknown.

I love painting. As far as photography is concerned, I understand nothing.

Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It's a way of life.

Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes forever the precise and transitory instant. We photographers deal in things that are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth that can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory. The writer has time to reflect. He can accept and reject, accept again; and before committing his thoughts to paper he is able to tie the several relevant elements together. There is also a period when his brain "forgets," and his subconscious works on classifying his thoughts. But for photographers, what has gone is gone forever.

To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.

Rene Char wrote somewhere, apropos poetry, that there are those who create and those who discover; they are too completely different worlds. Photograph also has two sides to it and thank goodness, I am only intersted in those who discover; I feel a certain solidarity with those who set out in a spirit of discovery; I think there is much more risk invovled in this than in trying to create images; and in the end, reality is more important.

Memory is very important, the memory of each photo taken, flowing at the same speed as the event. During the work, you have to be sure that you haven't left any holes, that you've captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late.

Photography is, for me, a spontaneous impulse coming from an ever attentive eye which captures the moment and its eternity.

Sharpness is a bourgeois concept

I am a pack of nerves while waiting for the moment, and this feeling grows and grows and grows and then it explodes, it is a physical joy, a dance, space and time united. Yes, yes, yes, yes!

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.

For the world is movement, and you cannot be stationary in your attitude toward something that is moving.

Why do photographers start giving numbers to their prints? It's absurd. What do you do when the 20th print has been done? Do you swallow the negative? Do you shoot yourself? It's the gimmick of money.

In order to give meaning to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry.

A photographer is part pick-pocket and part tightrope dancer.

With the one eye that is closed, one looks within, with the other eye that is open, one looks without.

I believe that, through the act of living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us, which can mold us, but which can also be affected by us. A balance must be established between these two worlds - the one inside us and the one outside us.