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Nobody takes photographs, photographs take you.

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
Takes
Take
Photographs
Photograph
Nobody

More quotes by 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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Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.
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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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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It seems dangerous to be a portrait artist who does commissions for clients because everyone wants to be flattered, so they pose in such a way that there's nothing left of truth.
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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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
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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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Give me inspiration over information.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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Of course it's all luck.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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Sharpness is a bourgeois concept
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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
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You just have to live and life will give you pictures.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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Photography is nothing-it's life that interests me.
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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In a portrait, I’m looking for the silence in somebody.
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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A photographer must always work with the greatest respect for his subject and in terms of his own point of view.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
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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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...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