Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.

I remember being shocked when I came out from under the focusing cloth after a minute or two being submerged within that, at the startling green color of those ferns.

What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.

Photography is about light and what it does and how it is captured on a piece of negative.

Photography can be a volatile situation. It can be very potent.

It had rained on some vivid green ferns in Maine and it was quite beautiful. I was moving the camera slightly and studying the ground glass. Looking at those 20 square inches, trying to find out just what were the right elements to include.

I must beware of the photo, get what I can of it and then go.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

A photo is a creation.

I love photography, and I love the art of photography.

Wherever there is light, one can photograph.

I take a lot of pictures.

The lions taught me photography. They taught me patience and the sense of beauty, a beauty that penetrates you.

If your pictures are not good enough, it’s because you are not close enough.

The camera gives you some control.

A camera alone does not make a picture. To make a picture you need a camera, a photographer and above all a subject. It is the subject that determines the interest of the photograph.

While I'm working on something, every single part of me is in it. But then, once it's done, I leave that place behind. I usually don't like to revisit it. So it's almost like listening to a different person.

I don't think about who is doing what, but give my 100 per cent to whatever is coming to me.

I have a low-tech camera with one lens that I've shot everything in my life on. My subjects and my subject matter sometimes really are powerful, and so my job is to get it into focus.

... I'm sort of a nervous person with the camera, so I will just shoot arbitrarily until I can focus and compose something, and then I make a shot. So generally, in [the] proof sheets, there are only three or four really concentrated efforts to take a photograph. It's not like a professional kind of person who sets it up so every photograph looks really cool.

When the camera starts to roll, there is something of death about it.

If there's something that someone else can do, let them do it. If I couldn't do it uniquely, let someone else do it and I would get back to the lab.

...to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.

The highest excellence is seldom attained in more than one vocation. The roads leading to distinction in separate pursuits diverge, and the nearer we approach the one, the farther we recede from the other.

Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location.