Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bressonwas a French humanist photographer considered the master of candid photography, and an early user of 35 mm film. He helped develop street photography, and approvingly cited a notion of the inevitability of a decisive moment, a term adopted as the title for his first major book. His work has influenced many photographers...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth22 August 1908
CountryFrance
reality thinking discovery
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.
inspiration giving information
Give me inspiration over information.
artist drawing silence
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 reality want
The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.
kissing gun machines
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.
photography balance elements
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 views photographer
A photographer must always work with the greatest respect for his subject and in terms of his own point of view.
photography cameras moments
The picture is good or not from the moment it was caught in the camera.
photography taken light
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.
photography taken dark
...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.
photography thinking done
Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing.
photography eye expression
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.
photography eye expression
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.
reality lasts last-words
Everyone has got some preconceptions, but you have to readjust them in front of reality. Reality has the last word.