165 Quotes by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Rene Char wrote somewhere, apropos poetry, that there are those who create and those who discover; they are too completely different worlds. Photograph also has two sides to it and thank goodness, I am only intersted in those who discover; I feel a certain solidarity with those who set out in a spirit of discovery; I think there is much more risk invovled in this than in trying to create images; and in the end, reality is more important.

Give me inspiration over information.

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.

The camera can be a machine gun, a warm kiss, a sketchbook. Shooting a camera is like saying, Yes, yes, yes. There is no maybe. All the maybes should go in the trash.

Inside movement there is one moment in which the elements are in balance. Photography must seize the importance of this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it.

A photographer must always work with the greatest respect for his subject and in terms of his own point of view.

The picture is good or not from the moment it was caught in the camera.

And no photographs taken with the aid of flash light, either, if only out of respect for the actual light - even when there isn't any of it.

...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.