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Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience.
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
Documentaries
Poetic
Intuition
Photography
Experience
Documentary
More quotes by Henri Cartier-Bresson
I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Photography is, for me, a spontaneous impulse coming from an ever attentive eye which captures the moment and its eternity.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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
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
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
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.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
What reinforces the content of a photograph is the sense of rhythm - the relationship between shapes and values.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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
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
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
Nobody takes photographs, photographs take you.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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
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
The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression... In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Pictures should never be posed. They are 'revealed' so must be accepted as they are. Left alone.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
I love painting. As far as photography is concerned, I understand nothing.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Of course it's all luck.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Freedom for me is a strict frame, and inside that frame are all the variations possible.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing.
Henri Cartier-Bresson