165 Quotes by Henri Cartier-Bresson

It’s seldom you make a great picture. you have to milk the cow quite a lot to get plenty of milk to make a little cheese.

Photography is nothing-it’s life that interests me.

Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s own originality. It’s a way of life.

To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.

While we’re working, we must be conscious of what we’re doing.

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.

The photograph itself doesn’t interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.

The difference between a good picture and a mediocre picture is a question of millimeters – small, small differences – but it’s essential. I didn’t think there is such a big difference between photographers. Very little difference. But it is that little difference that counts, maybe.

As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit. Photography has something to do with death. It’s a trace.