Best 112 quotes of Henri Cartier-bresson on MyQuotes

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

As far as I am concerned, taking photographs is a means of understanding which cannot be separated from other means of visual expression. It is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It is a way of life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

For the world is movement, and you cannot be stationary in your attitude toward something that is moving.

Give me inspiration over information.

Human faces are such a world!

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

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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

I'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.

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.

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

In every photographer there is something of a stroller.

In order to give meaning to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

It is by great economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.

...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.

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

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.

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.

Life is once. Forever.

Memory is very important, the memory of each photo taken, flowing at the same speed as the event.

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

Of course it's all luck.

One eye looks within, the other eye looks without.

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

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

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

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.