Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bressonwas a French humanist photographer considered the master of candid photography, and an early user of 35 mm film. He helped develop street photography, and approvingly cited a notion of the inevitability of a decisive moment, a term adopted as the title for his first major book. His work has influenced many photographers...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth22 August 1908
CountryFrance
Henri Cartier-Bresson quotes about
artist drawing silence
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.
photography hunters shooting
I adore shooting photographs. It's like being a hunter. But some hunters are vegetarians - which is my relationship to photography.
attitude moving world
For the world is movement, and you cannot be stationary in your attitude toward something that is moving.
eye vision looks
One eye looks within, the other eye looks without.
photography mean expression
Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes a precise moment in time.
photography drawing care
All I care about these days is painting — photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing.
variation strict
Freedom for me is a strict frame, and inside that frame are all the variations possible.
photography artist portraits
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.
photography mean expression
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.
photography important leica
Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical aspects, which for me are not important.
photography today spontaneity
I suddenly understood that photography can fix eternity in a moment. It is the only photo that influenced me. There is such intensity in this image, such spontaneity, such joie de vivre, such miraculousness, that even today it still bowls me over.
photography eye essence
Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.
photography taken force
A photograph is neither taken or seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.
photography together mixtures
Only a fraction of the camera's possibilities interests me - the marvelous mixture of emotion and geometry, together in a single instant.