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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.

-Henri Cartier-Bresson

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If, In Making A

Henri Cartier-Bresson

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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.

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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.

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Sharpness Is A Bourgeois Concept

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

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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 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.

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

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.

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).

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.

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

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

Human Faces Are Such A World!

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Nobody Takes Photographs, Photographs Take You.

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 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

Life Is Once. Forever.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Photographers Deal In Things Which Are Continuously Vanishing.

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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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One Eye Looks Within, The Other Eye Looks Without.

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

We Cannot Develop And Print A Memory.

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

Of Course It's All Luck.

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

We Must Respect The Atmosphere Which Surrounds The Human Being

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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 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.

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!

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

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

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.

Photography Is An Immediate Reaction, Drawing Is A Meditation.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

...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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

Give Me Inspiration Over Information.

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

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

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

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