Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes - Page 4

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.

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

...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 most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.

Only a fraction of the camera's possibilities interests me - the marvelous mixture of emotion and geometry, together in a single instant.

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.

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.

I enjoy very much seeing a good photographer working. There’s an elegance, just like in a bullfight.

We must respect the atmosphere which surrounds the human being

The intensive use of photographs by mass media lays ever fresh responsibilities upon the photographer. We have to acknowledge the existence of a chasm between the economic needs of our consumer society and the requirements of those who bear witness to this epoch. This affects us all, particularly the younger generations of photographers. We must take greater care than ever not to allow ourselves to be separated from the real world and from humanity.

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

In photography, the smallest thing can become a big subject, an insignificant human detail can become a leitmotiv. We see and we make seen as a witness to the world around us; the event, in its natural activity, generates an organic rhythm of forms.

Photography must seize upon this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it. The photographers eye is perpetually evaluating. A photographer can bring coincidence of line simply by moving his head a fraction of a millimeter. He can modify perspectives by a slight bending of the knees. By placing the camera closer to or farther from the subject, he draws a detail — and it can be subordinated, or he can be tyrannized by it.

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.

The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression... In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif.

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

Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing. Success depends on the extent of one's general culture. one's set of values, one's clarity of mind one's vivacity. The thing to be feared most is the artificially contrived, the contrary to life.

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.

Actually, I'm not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I'm not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren't cooks.

The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box.

I am a visual man. I watch, watch, watch. I understand things through my eyes.

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.

In every photographer there is something of a stroller.

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

Photography appears to be an easy activity; in fact it is a varied and ambiguous process in which the only common denominator among its practitioners is in the instrument.