Let's assume that all the cassettes of monochrome film Cartier-Bresson ever exposed had somehow been surreptitiously loaded with colour film. I'd venture to say that about two thirds of his pictures would be ruined and the remainder unaffected, neither spoiled nor improved. And perhaps one in a thousand enhanced.

The first picture of his I ever saw was during a lecture at the Rhyl camera club. I was 16 and the speaker was Emrys Jones. He projected the picture upside down. Deliberately, to disregard the subject matter to reveal the composition. It's a lesson I've never forgotten.

... we are there with our cameras to record reality. Once we start modifying that which exists, we are robbing photography of its most valuable attribute.

Even if not a single picture is never published, they exist. And that means that we are recording the history of the human race. If that's all your doing, it still a very very worth while profession to be involved in.

Let's assume that all the cassettes of monochrome film Cartier-Bresson ever exposed had somehow been surreptitiously loaded with colour film. I'd venture to say that about two thirds of his pictures would be ruined and the remainder unaffected, neither spoiled nor improved. And perhaps one in a thousand enhanced.

The only thing we photographers really want more than life, more than sex, more than anything, is to be invisible.

When Bill Gates started Corbis we were told that he needed images to fill those digital picture frames in his home, and many found this plausible. But now it's pretty clear that he's set out to control the visual history of the twentieth century.