Some photographs are like a Chekhov short story or a Maupassant story. They're quick things and there's a whole world in them.… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes a precise moment in time. — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
I adore shooting photographs. It's like being a hunter. But some hunters are vegetarians - which is my relationship to photography. — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
And no photographs taken with the aid of flash light, either, if only out of respect for the actual light - even… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical aspects, which for me are not important. — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
...it is seldom indeed that a composition which was poor when the picture was taken can be improved by reshaping it in… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
They ... asked me: 'How do you make your pictures?' I was puzzled ... I said, I don't know, it's not important. — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
One eye of the photographer looks wide open through the viewfinder, the other, the closed looks into his own soul. — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
I'm not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It's drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, and then… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
This recognition, in real life, of a rhythm of surfaces, lines, and values is for me the essence of photography; composition should… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
The difference between a good picture and a mediocre picture is a question of millimeters - small, small differences - but it’s… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
In photography, the smallest thing can become a big subject, an insignificant human detail can become a leitmotiv. We see and we… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing. Success depends on the extent of one's general culture. one's set of… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
Thinking should be done beforehand and afterwards - never while actually taking a photograph. — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
In photography, you've got to be quick, quick, quick, quick...Like an animal and a prey. — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
Reality offers us such wealth that we must cut some of it out on the spot, simplify. The question is, do we… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
Pictures should never be posed. They are 'revealed' so must be accepted as they are. Left alone. — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
Only a fraction of the camera's possibilities interests me - the marvelous mixture of emotion and geometry, together in a single instant. — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
Think about the photo before and after, never during. The secret is to take your time. You mustn't go too fast. The… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
Inside movement there is one moment in which the elements are in balance. Photography must seize the importance of this moment and hold immobile… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
Rene Char wrote somewhere, apropos poetry, that there are those who create and those who discover; they are too completely different worlds. Photograph also… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
Photography is, for me, a spontaneous impulse coming from an ever attentive eye which captures the moment and its eternity. — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
The camera is for us a tool, not a pretty mechanical toy ... people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing. — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
In order to give meaning to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event. — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
The intensive use of photographs by mass media lays ever fresh responsibilities upon the photographer. We have to acknowledge the existence of a chasm… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
Reality offers us such wealth that we must cut some of it out on the spot, simplify. The question is, do we always cut… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
What do you think I'm a professor of? The little finger? (On offers of honorary doctorates.) — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
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… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
Photography appears to be an easy activity; in fact it is a varied and ambiguous process in which the only common denominator among its… — Henri Cartier-Bresson Copy Share Image
