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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.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

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Henri Cartier-Bresson
Age: 95 †
Born: 1908
Born: August 22
Died: 2004
Died: January 1
Film Director
Journalist
Painter
Photographer
Photojournalist
Henri Cartier Bresson
Henri Cartier- Bresson
Henry Cartier-Bresson
Bresson
Hold
Breath
Joy
Breaths
Converge
Becomes
Photographer
Mastering
Moment
Photograph
Faculties
Moments
Image
Fleeting
Reality
Photography
Precise
Great
Physical
Capture
Intellectual
Faculty

More quotes by Henri Cartier-Bresson

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Everyone has got some preconceptions, but you have to readjust them in front of reality. Reality has the last word.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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
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One eye looks within, the other eye looks without.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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He made me suddenly realize that photographs could reach eternity through the moment.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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Pictures should never be posed. They are 'revealed' so must be accepted as they are. Left alone.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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For the world is movement, and you cannot be stationary in your attitude toward something that is moving.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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Memory is very important, the memory of each photo taken, flowing at the same speed as the event.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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Photographers deal in things which are continuously vanishing.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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Nobody takes photographs, photographs take you.
Henri Cartier-Bresson