165 Quotes by Henri Cartier-Bresson

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

One eye of the photographer looks wide open through the viewfinder, the other, the closed looks into his own soul.

We cannot develop and print a memory.

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).

It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart and head.

The only thing which completely was an amazement to me and brought me to photography was the work of Munkacsi. When I saw the photograph of Munkacsi of the black kids running in a wave, I couldn't believe such a thing could be caught with the camera. I said, 'Damn it', I took my camera and went out into the street.

A photographer’s eye is perpetually evaluating. A photographer can bring coincidence of line simply by moving his head a fraction of a millimetre. He can modify perspectives by a slight bending of the knees. By placing the camera closer to or farther from the subject, he draws a detail. But he composes a picture in very nearly the same amount of time it takes to click the shutter, at the speed of a reflex action.

Photography is like fencing. You must keep your distance, wait, and then thrust.

Human faces are such a world!