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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.

-Henri Cartier-Bresson

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As Time Passes By

Henri Cartier-Bresson

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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.

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More From Henri Cartier-Bresson

The Intensive Use Of Photographs By Mass Media Lays Ever Fresh Responsibilities Upon The Photographer. We Have To Acknowledge The Existence Of A Chasm Between The Economic Needs Of Our Consumer Society And The Requirements Of Those Who Bear Witness To This Epoch. This Affects Us All, Particularly The Younger Generations Of Photographers. We Must Take Greater Care Than Ever Not To Allow Ourselves To Be Separated From The Real World And From Humanity.

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.

While We're Working, We Must Be Conscious Of What We're Doing.

Thinking Should Be Done Beforehand And Afterwards - Never While Actually Taking A Photograph.

Nobody Takes Photographs, Photographs Take You.

Thinking Should Be Done Before And After, Not During Photographing.

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

Photographers Deal In Things Which Are Continuously Vanishing.

It's Wonderful To Be Famous As Long As You Remain Unknown.

...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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What Do You Think I'm A Professor Of? The Little Finger? (on Offers Of Honorary Doctorates.)

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.

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.

The Picture Is Good Or Not From The Moment It Was Caught In The Camera.

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.

It Is The Photo That Takes You. One Must Not Take Photos.

Art Photography

The Camera Can Be A Machine Gun, A Warm Kiss, A Sketchbook. Shooting A Camera Is Like Saying, Yes, Yes, Yes. There Is No Maybe. All The Maybes Should Go In The Trash.

Reality Offers Us Such Wealth That We Must Cut Some Of It Out On The Spot, Simplify. The Question Is, Do We Always Cut Out What We Should?

Photography Is Not Documentary, But Intuition, A Poetic Experience.

One Has To Tiptoe Lightly And Steal Up To One's Quarry; You Don't Swish The Water When You Are Fishing.

Of Course It's All Luck.

Pictures Should Never Be Posed. They Are 'revealed' So Must Be Accepted As They Are. Left Alone.

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'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.

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.

Freedom For Me Is A Strict Frame, And Inside That Frame Are All The Variations Possible.

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.

Photography Has Not Changed Since Its Origin Except In Its Technical Aspects, Which For Me Are Not Important.

Photography Must Seize Upon This Moment And Hold Immobile The Equilibrium Of It. The Photographers Eye Is Perpetually Evaluating. A Photographer Can Bring Coincidence Of Line Simply By Moving His Head A Fraction Of A Millimeter. He Can Modify Perspectives By A Slight Bending Of The Knees. By Placing The Camera Closer To Or Farther From The Subject, He Draws A Detail — And It Can Be Subordinated, Or He Can Be Tyrannized By It.

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.

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.

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.

The Camera Is For Us A Tool, Not A Pretty Mechanical Toy ... People Think Far Too Much About Techniques And Not Enough About Seeing.

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.

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.

Sharpness Is A Bourgeois Concept

Human Faces Are Such A World!

There Is No Closed Figure In Nature. Every Shape Participates With Another. No One Thing Is Independent Of Another, And One Thing Rhymes With Another, And Light Gives Them Shape.

For Me, The Camera Is A Sketch Book, An Instrument Of Intuition And Spontaneity.

I Adore Shooting Photographs. It's Like Being A Hunter. But Some Hunters Are Vegetarians - Which Is My Relationship To Photography.

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.

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.

To Photograph: It Is To Put On The Same Line Of Sight The Head, The Eye And The Heart.

Your First 10,000 Photographs Are Your Worst.

You Just Have To Live And Life Will Give You Pictures.

Photography Is An Immediate Reaction, Drawing Is A Meditation.

Rene Char Wrote Somewhere, Apropos Poetry, That There Are Those Who Create And Those Who Discover; They Are Too Completely Different Worlds. Photograph Also Has Two Sides To It And Thank Goodness, I Am Only Intersted In Those Who Discover; I Feel A Certain Solidarity With Those Who Set Out In A Spirit Of Discovery; I Think There Is Much More Risk Invovled In This Than In Trying To Create Images; And In The End, Reality Is More Important.

Photography Is, For Me, A Spontaneous Impulse Coming From An Ever Attentive Eye Which Captures The Moment And Its Eternity.

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.

Before And After

Of All The Means Of Expression, Photography Is The Only One That Fixes A Precise Moment In Time.

To Take Photographs Is Putting One's Head, One's Eye, And One's Heart On The Same Axis

We Must Avoid However, Snapping Away, Shooting Quickly And Without Thought, Overloading Ourselves With Unnecessary Images That Clutter Our Memory And Diminish The Clarity Of The Whole.

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.

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!

Photography Is Like Fencing. You Must Keep Your Distance, Wait, And Then Thrust.

In A Portrait, I’m Looking For The Silence In Somebody.

Life Is Once. Forever.

They ... Asked Me: 'how Do You Make Your Pictures?' I Was Puzzled ... I Said, I Don't Know, It's Not Important.

I Am A Visual Man. I Watch, Watch, Watch. I Understand Things Through My Eyes.

Photography Is A Way Of Shouting, Of Freeing Oneself, Not Of Proving Or Asserting One's Own Originality. It's A Way Of Life.

For The World Is Movement, And You Cannot Be Stationary In Your Attitude Toward Something That Is Moving.

Photography Is Simultaneously And Instantaneously The Recognition Of A Fact And The Rigorous Organization Of Visually Perceived Forms That Express And Signify That Fact

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.

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.

The World Is Being Created Every Minute, And The World Is Falling To Pieces Every Minute

Photography Is Nothing-it's Life That Interests Me.

Great Photography

The Photograph Itself Doesn't Interest Me. I Want Only To Capture A Minute Part Of Reality.

It Is By Great Economy Of Means That One Arrives At Simplicity Of Expression.

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.

To Me, Photography Is The Simultaneous Recognition, In A Fraction Of A Second, Of The Significance Of An Event.

In Photography, You've Got To Be Quick, Quick, Quick, Quick...like An Animal And A Prey.

I Enjoy Very Much Seeing A Good Photographer Working. There’s An Elegance, Just Like In A Bullfight.

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.

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.

Oop! The Moment! Once You Miss It, It Is Gone Forever.

In Every Photographer There Is Something Of A Stroller.

It Is Through Living That We Discover Ourselves, At The Same Time As We Discover The World Around Us.

Memory Is Very Important, The Memory Of Each Photo Taken, Flowing At The Same Speed As The Event.

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).

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.

Only A Fraction Of The Camera's Possibilities Interests Me - The Marvelous Mixture Of Emotion And Geometry, Together In A Single Instant.

The Adventurer In Me Felt Obliged To Testify With A Quicker Instrument Than A Brush To The Scars Of The 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.

Some Photographs Are Like A Chekhov Short Story Or A Maupassant Story. They're Quick Things And There's A Whole World In Them. But One Is Unconscious Of It While Shooting.

A Photographer Is Part Pick-pocket And Part Tightrope Dancer.

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.

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.

The Photography Is A Chopper Which In The Eternity Seizes The Moment Which Dazzled It.

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.

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.

Photographier: C'est Mettre Sur La Meme Ligne De Mire La Tete, L'oeil Et Le Coeur.

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.

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.

A Photographer Must Always Work With The Greatest Respect For His Subject And In Terms Of His Own Point Of View.

I Suddenly Understood That A Photograph Could Fix Eternity In An Instant.

All I Care About These Days Is Painting — Photography Has Never Been More Than A Way Into Painting, A Sort Of Instant Drawing.

Photography Is Only Intuition, A Perpetual Interrogation - Everything Except A Stage Set.

There Is Nothing In This World That Does Not Have A Decisive Moment.

One Eye Of The Photographer Looks Wide Open Through The Viewfinder, The Other, The Closed Looks Into His Own Soul.

It Is An Illusion That Photos Are Made With The Camera... They Are Made With The Eye, Heart And Head.

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.

One Eye Looks Within, The Other Eye Looks Without.

I Love Painting. As Far As Photography Is Concerned, I Understand Nothing.

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.

What Reinforces The Content Of A Photograph Is The Sense Of Rhythm - The Relationship Between Shapes And Values.

In Photography, The Smallest Thing Can Be A Great Subject. The Little, Human Detail Can Become A Leitmotiv.

Everyone Has Got Some Preconceptions, But You Have To Readjust Them In Front Of Reality. Reality Has The Last Word.

In Whatever One Does There Must Be A Relationship Between The Eye And The Heart.

Give Me Inspiration Over Information.

He Made Me Suddenly Realize That Photographs Could Reach Eternity Through The Moment.

We Must Respect The Atmosphere Which Surrounds The Human Being

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.

With The One Eye That Is Closed, One Looks Within, With The Other Eye That Is Open, One Looks Without.

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