Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes

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

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.

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.

Of course it's all luck.

Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes a precise moment in time.

I believe that, through the act of living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical aspects, which for me are not important.

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

There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.

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!

As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit. Photography has something to do with death. It's a trace.

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

Photographier: c'est mettre sur la meme ligne de mire la tete, l'oeil et le coeur.

Nobody takes photographs, photographs take you.

To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It's at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.

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.

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.

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?

The difference between a good picture and a mediocre picture is a question of millimeters - small, small differences - but it’s essential. I didn’t think there is such a big difference between photographers. Very little difference. But it is that little difference that counts, maybe

In photography, you've got to be quick, quick, quick, quick...Like an animal and a prey.

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.

Everyone has got some preconceptions, but you have to readjust them in front of reality. Reality has the last word.

There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment.

What do you think I'm a professor of? The little finger? (On offers of honorary doctorates.)

To take photographs is putting one's head, one's eye, and one's heart on the same axis

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.

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.

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 only thing which completely was an amazement to me and brought me to photography was the work of Munkacsi. When I saw the photograph of Munkacsi of the black kids running in a wave, I couldn't believe such a thing could be caught with the camera. I said, 'Damn it', I took my camera and went out into the street.

Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.

Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.

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.

Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.

In whatever one does there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart.

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 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.

Give me inspiration over information.

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 seldom you make a great picture. you have to milk the cow quite a lot to get plenty of milk to make a little cheese.