165 Quotes by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Poetry is the essence of everything, and it’s through deep contact with reality and living fully that you reach poetry. Very often I see photographers cultivating the strangeness or awkwardness of a scene, thinking it is poetry. No. Poetry is two elements which are suddenly conflict — a spark between two elements. But it’s given very seldom, and you can’t look for it. It’s like if you look for inspiration. No, it just comes by enriching yourself and living.

Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical aspects, which for me are not important.

For the world is movement, and you cannot be stationary in your attitude toward something that is moving.

I believe that, through the act of living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us.

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.

All I care about these days is painting — photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing.

Freedom for me is a strict frame, and inside that frame are all the variations possible.

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.

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.