Henri Cartier-Bresson
Street photography pioneer of the decisive moment.
Quotes by Henri Cartier-Bresson
Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.
Photography is not like painting. 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.
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 photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want to see only the world.
A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, or a dance. It is not an end in itself, but a means of communication.
The camera is an extension of the eye, a tool for observation.
We are not here to invent, but to witness.
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.
It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart and head.
The creative act is a brief, intense moment of intuition.
Photography is a way of shouting, of liberating oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It's a way of life.
The world is going to pieces and people like Cartier-Bresson are making art.
I am a visual person. I think in images.
Drawing is the basis of everything.
The real world is more fantastic than any fantasy.
Memory is very important. The memory of your life, the memory of your work, the memory of your feelings.
The most difficult thing for me is to be in front of the camera.
I adore the life of a tramp, a vagabond.
The camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.
The subject is there, you just have to choose the right angle, the right moment.