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I love painting. As far as photography is concerned, I understand nothing.

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
Love
Photography
Concerned
Painting
Understand
Nothing

More quotes by Henri Cartier-Bresson

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It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart and head.
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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One eye looks within, the other eye looks without.
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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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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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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The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.
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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It is through living that we discover ourselves, at the same time as we discover the world around us.
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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Only a fraction of the camera's possibilities interests me - the marvelous mixture of emotion and geometry, together in a single instant.
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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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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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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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
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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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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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Freedom for me is a strict frame, and inside that frame are all the variations possible.
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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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