Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes

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.

We cannot develop and print a memory.

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

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

A photograph is neither taken or seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.

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

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

Poetry is the essence of everything, and it’s through deep contact with reality and living fully that you reach poetry. Very often I see photographers cultivating the strangeness or awkwardness of a scene, thinking it is poetry. No. Poetry is two elements which are suddenly conflict — a spark between two elements. But it’s given very seldom, and you can’t look for it. It’s like if you look for inspiration. No, it just comes by enriching yourself and living.

One has to tiptoe lightly and steal up to one's quarry; you don't swish the water when you are fishing.

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.

...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.

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

For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.

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

In a portrait, I’m looking for the silence in somebody.

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

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

Photography is like fencing. You must keep your distance, wait, and then thrust.

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.

One eye looks within, the other eye looks without.

Inside movement there is one moment in which the elements are in balance. Photography must seize the importance of this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I suddenly understood that photography can fix eternity in a moment. It is the only photo that influenced me. There is such intensity in this image, such spontaneity, such joie de vivre, such miraculousness, that even today it still bowls me over.

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

To 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.

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

Life is once. Forever.

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.

Photography is only intuition, a perpetual interrogation - everything except a stage set.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

You just have to live and life will give you pictures.

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.

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 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.

Sharpness is a bourgeois concept