Henri Cartier-Bresson quotes

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

#Photography #Details #Littles

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

#Photography #Book #Intuition

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

#Inspiring #Photography #Second Chance

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Inspiring #Photography #Drawing

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

#Photography #Eye #Moments

Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It's a way of life.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Way #Originality

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Reality #Joy

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

#Photography #Eye #Heart

Of course it's all luck.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Luck

You just have to live and life will give you pictures.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Giving

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Eye #Essence

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Mean #Eye

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Hunters #Next

Life is once. Forever.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Forever #Life Is

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

#World

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Eye #Expression #Intuition

Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Forever #Missing #Gone

Sharpness is a bourgeois concept
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Sharpness

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Balance #Elements

To photograph: it is to put on the same line of sight the head, the eye and the heart.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Eye #Heart

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

#Photography #Views #Photographer

In a portrait, I’m looking for the silence in somebody.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Silence #Portraits

The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Reality #Want

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Too Late #Holes

He made me suddenly realize that photographs could reach eternity through the moment.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Realizing #Moments

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

#Photography #Believe #Discovery

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Eye #Expression

The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression... In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Expression #Organization

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

#Photography #Drawing #Way

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

#Photography #Eye #Soul

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Self #Intuition

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Artist #Portraits

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

#Photographer #Elegance #Enjoy

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

#Attitude #Moving #Movement

I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Eternity #Photograph #Instant

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
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Thinking #Differences #Essentials

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

#Photography #Mean #Expression

The picture is good or not from the moment it was caught in the camera.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Cameras #Moments

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Thinking #Secret

One eye looks within, the other eye looks without.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Eye #Vision #Looks

And no photographs taken with the aid of flash light, either, if only out of respect for the actual light - even when there isn't any of it.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Taken #Light

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

#Photography #Intuition #Stage

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Earth #Vanishing

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

#Variation #Strict

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Art #Creativity

It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography

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

#Photography #Shapes #Rhythm

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

#Photography #Important #Aspect

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Skins #Trying

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Country #Travel #Long

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Running #Believe

The world is being created every minute, and the world is falling to pieces every minute
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Fall #Pieces #World

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).
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Technology #Important

In whatever one does there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Art #Heart #Eye

Your fitsy 10,000 photographs are your worst.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Inspirational #Photograph #Worst

We cannot develop and print a memory.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Memories #Print

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.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Numbers #Giving #Negative

A photographer is part pick-pocket and part tightrope dancer.
-- Henri Cartier-Bresson

#Photography #Dancer #Pockets