Only a fraction of the camera's possibilities interests me - the marvelous mixture of emotion and geometry, together in a single instant.
Henri Cartier-BressonTo take photographs is putting one's head, one's eye, and one's heart on the same axis
Henri Cartier-BressonTo me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression. And this organization, this precision, will always escape you, if you do not appreciate what a picture is, if you do not understand that the composition, the logic, the equilibrium of the surfaces and values are the only ways of giving meaning to all that is continuously appearing and vanishing before our very eyes.
Henri Cartier-BressonI'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