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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.

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
Understanding
Photographer
Freeing
Means
Photograph
Proving
Cannot
Oneself
Shouting
Mean
Photography
Separated
Way
Concerned
Originality
Life
Prove
Photographs
Taking
Visuals
Expression
Visual
Asserting

More quotes by Henri Cartier-Bresson

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Of course it's all luck.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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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Photography is simultaneously and instantaneously the recognition of a fact and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that express and signify that fact
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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).
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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Freedom for me is a strict frame, and inside that frame are all the variations possible.
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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...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.
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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In every photographer there is something of a stroller.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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What reinforces the content of a photograph is the sense of rhythm - the relationship between shapes and values.
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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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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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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He made me suddenly realize that photographs could reach eternity through the moment.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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It is by great economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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I love painting. As far as photography is concerned, I understand nothing.
Henri Cartier-Bresson