HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON

The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box.

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.

To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.

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.

During the work, you have to be sure that you haven't left any holes, that you've captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late.

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.

Memory is very important, the memory of each photo taken, flowing at the same speed as the event. During the work, you have to be sure that you haven't left any holes, that you've captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late.

To take photographs means to recognize - simultaneously and within a fraction of a second - both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye and one's heart on the same axis.

Actually, I'm not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I'm not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren't cooks.

Think about the photo before and after, never during. The secret is to take your time. You mustn't go too fast. The subject must forget about you. Then, however, you must be very quick.

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.

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

In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv.

The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.

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

One has to tiptoe lightly and steal up to one's quarry; you don't swish the water when you are fishing.

Pictures should never be posed. They are 'revealed' so must be accepted as they are. Left alone.

To take photographs is putting one's head, one's eye, and one's heart on the same axis

Of course it's all luck.

It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.

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.

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

We must avoid however, snapping away, shooting quickly and without thought, overloading ourselves with unnecessary images that clutter our memory and diminish the clarity of the whole.

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

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.