Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes

This thing called the camera, that takes everything in equally, taught me a lot about how to see.

You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.

Photography doesn't teach you to express your emotions; it teaches you how to see.

Leica, schmeica. The camera doesn't make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But you have to see.

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.

I've no doubt that those photographs i took will make people look at everything in a more interesting way - the little tear on one piece of paper, the shadow on another. But good painting has always done that - made you see things. And the most ordinary can be the most extraordinary.

My work isn't about form. It's about seeing. I'm excited about seeing things, and I'm interested in the way I think other people see things.

My pictures are my eyes. I photograph what I see - and what I want to see.

To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

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.

A camera teaches you how to see without a camera.

Photography helps people to see.

It doesn't matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.

When I’m photographing I see life.

Photography is, first of all, a way of seeing.

You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them.

Photography's a case of keeping all the pores of the skin open, as well as the eyes. A lot of photographers today think that by putting on the uniform, the fishing vest, and all the Nikons, that that makes them a photographer. But it doesn't. It's not just seeing. It's feeling.

The thing is that when you don't carry a camera, that's when you see pictures in particular, or at least that's when you think you see pictures in particular. When you do carry it, if you do see one on the occasion that you do, you can take it.

I try to use whatever I know about photography to be of service to the people I'm photographing.

I can't really envision a time when I'm not shooting something.

Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer and clearer still, until your eyes ache.

It is not altogether wrong to say that there is no such thing as a bad photograph - only less interesting, less relevant, less mysterious ones.

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.