Henri Cartier Bresson Quotes

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

It was from him, and from this picture in particular, that Henri Cartier-Bresson had developed the ideal of the decisive moment. Photography seemed to me, as I stood there in the white gallery with its rows of pictures and its press of murmuring spectators, an uncanny art like no other. One moment, in all of history, was captured, but the moments before and after it disappeared into the onrush of time; only that selected moment itself was privileged, saved, for no other reason than its having been picked out by the camera's eye. ~ Teju Cole

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

It is through living that we discover ourselves, at the same time as we discover the world around us. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Freedom for me is a strict frame, and inside that frame are all the variations possible. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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

Photography is nothing-it's life that interests me. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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

I love painting. As far as photography is concerned, I understand nothing. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

For the world is movement, and you cannot be stationary in your attitude toward something that is moving. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Your fitsy 10,000 photographs are your worst. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Sharpness is a bourgeois concept ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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

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

One eye of the photographer looks wide open through the viewfinder, the other, the closed looks into his own soul. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

I'm a big fan of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the French photographer who had that whole "decisive moment" approach to taking pictures, of having multiple elements line up within the frame. ~ Nick Zinner

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Give me inspiration over information. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

We must respect the atmosphere which surrounds the human being ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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

Photography is simultaneously and instantaneously the recognition of a fact and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that express and signify that fact ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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

I'm a huge, huge fan of photography. I have a small photography collection. As soon as I started to make some money, I bought my very first photograph: an Henri Cartier-Bresson. Then I bought a Robert Frank. ~ Annie Leibovitz

Thinking should be done beforehand and afterwards - never while actually taking a photograph. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

A photographer is part pick-pocket and part tightrope dancer. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

And what we called photojournalism, the photos seen in places like Life magazine, didn't interest me either. They were just not good-there was no art there. The first person who I respected immensely was Henri Cartier-Bresson. I still do. ~ William Eggleston

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). ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Pictures should never be posed. They are 'revealed' so must be accepted as they are. Left alone. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

The world is being created every minute, and the world is falling to pieces every minute ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

He made me suddenly realize that photographs could reach eternity through the moment. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

While we're working, we must be conscious of what we're doing. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Human faces are such a world! ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Life is once. Forever. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Of course it's all luck. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

It's wonderful to be famous as long as you remain unknown. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

The Photography is a chopper which in the eternity seizes the moment which dazzled it. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera ... they are made with the eye, heart and head. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

The adventurer in me felt obliged to testify with a quicker instrument than a brush to the scars of the world. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

It is by great economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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? ­ ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

In an era when museum curators were busy introducing the public to photographs of daily life taken by Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Diane Arbus, why did they simultaneously disdain paintings depicting the same kind of people? ~ Burton Silverman

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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! ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a Leitmotiv. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

With the one eye that is closed, one looks within, with the other eye that is open, one looks without. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

I think probably something big can be done with cameras, I'm not saying, er, I'm saying chemical photography's finished, that means you can't have a Cartier Bresson again, you need never believe pictures. ~ David Hockney

The personality and style of a photographer usually limits the type of subject with which he deals best. For example Cartier-Bresson is very interested in people and in travel; these things plus his precise feeling for geometrical relationships determine the type of pictures he takes best. What is of value is that a particular photographer sees the subject differently. A good picture must be a completely individual expression which intrigues the viewer and forces him to think. ~ Alexey Brodovitch

When Cartier-Bresson goes to China, he shows that there are people in China, and that they are Chinese. ~ Susan Sontag

I don't like gimmicky pictures; I've always hated them. I like pictures that are very clear and clean, whether you're a great street photographer - somebody like Friedlander or Winogrand or Cartier-Bresson - or whether you're a portraitist, like Irving Penn. ~ Mary Ellen Mark

While photography to Cartier-Bresson is constantly an intuitive process, it is never purely instinctive. It is founded on continuous intellection, on ceaseless consideration during all moments previous to, or preparatory for, the pressing. It does not only operate in the blinding flash of a moment seized; it works all the time. The snatched picture merely cuts across the vein of observable incident or accident which is always beating, whether or not the fingers actually press. ~ Lincoln Kirstein

The photographic moment for Cartier-Bresson is an instant, a fraction of a second, and he stalks that instant as though it were a wild animal. The photographic moment for Strand is a biographical or historic moment, whose duration is ideally measured not by seconds but by its relation to a lifetime. Strand does not pursue an instant, but encourages a moment to arise as one might encourage a story to be told. ~ John Berger

I don't belong to any school. I work in my corner. I admire Degas. ~ Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec

The farther I run away from the place where God dwells, the less I am able to hear the voice that calls me the Beloved, and the less I hear that voice, the more entangled I become in the manipulations and power games of the world. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

It is by chance that we met, by choice that we became friends. ~ Henri Nouwen

The advance of science is not comparable to the changes of a city, where old edifices are pitilessly torn down to give place to new, but to the continuous evolution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly and end by becoming unrecognisable to the common sight, but where an expert eye finds always traces of the prior work of the centuries past. One must not think then that the old-fashioned theories have been sterile and vain. ~ Henri Poincare

Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to a fertile soil for more joy. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it. ~ Henri Matisse

If I were an antiquarian, I would have eyes only for old stuff, but I am a historian. Therefore, I love life. ~ Henri Pirenne

Instinct must be thwarted just as one prunes the branches of a tree so that it will grow better. ~ Henri Matisse

If you trace the history of Islamist terrorism, you see that its founders were great admirers of European fascism. They read the texts of European fascism, they quoted them in speeches and letters. This is not from the Koran - the Koran doesn't teach you how to repress people; there's nothing in there about women having to cover their faces, there's certainly nothing about suicide bombing. ~ Bernard-Henri Levy

The Lord is coming, always coming. When you have ears to hear and eyes to see, you will recognize him at any moment of your life. Life is Advent; life is recognizing the coming of the Lord ~ Henri Nouwen

Nuclear man is the man who realizes that his creative powers hold the potential for self-destruction. He sees that in this nuclear age vast new industrial complexes enable man to produce in one hour that which he labored over for years in the past, but he also realizes that these same industries have disturbed the ecological balance and, through air and noise pollution, have contaminated his own milieu ... ~ Henri Nouwen

Happiness needs unhappiness. Joy goes hand in hand with sorrow. It is thanks to the shadow that we exist. We must not dream of an absurd abstraction. We must guard the bond that links us to blood and earth. ~ Henri Barbusse

Where there is life, there is hope. ~ Henri Charriere

Christ invites us to remain in touch with the many sufferings of every day and to taste the beginning of hope and new life right there, where we live amid our hurts and pains and brokenness. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary line and adding to one's liberty. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all of our lives the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the successes as well as the failures, the rewards as well as the rejections that requires hard spiritual work. Still, we are only grateful people when we can say thank you to all that has brought us to the present moment. As long as we keep dividing our lives between events and people we would like to remember and those we would rather forget, we cannot claim the fullness of our beings as a gift of God to be grateful for. Let's not be afraid to look at everything that has brought us to where we are now and trust that we will soon see in it the guiding hand of a loving God. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle. ~ Robert Henri

A thousand things advance; nine hundred and ninety nine retreat; That is progress. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel