Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes

My idea of a good picture is one that's in focus and of a famous person.

I'm not great at having my picture taken and I don't enjoy that side of it very much but I enjoy being with my friends and it's nice to have a reunion.

I think the first picture taken is often the best one.

I used to take photographs just to remember people.

I love cameras but I find myself reluctantly taking pictures because what's past is past.

The lust of the eye. The best photographs were, to me, like an experience of drowning.

The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.

Kodak sells film, but they don't advertise film; they advertise memories.

Photographs open doors into the past, but they also alloq a look into the future

What is the subject matter of this apparently very personal world? It has been suggested that these shapes and images are underworld characters, the inhabitants of the vast common realm of memories that have gone down below the level of conscious control. It may be they are. The degree of emotional involvement and the amount of free association with the material being photographed would point in that direction.

The camera is a mirror with a memory, but it cannot think.

Memory selects single important images, just as the camera does. In that manner both are able to isolate the highest moments of living.

My first priority when taking pictures is to achieve clarity. A good documentary photograph transmits the information of the situation with the utmost fidelity; achieving it means understanding the nuances of lighting and composition, and also remembering to keep the lenses clean and the cameras steady.

Many photographers are consumed with the idea of making beautiful contact sheets. I am far more interested in making the best final print I can.

Photograph each day so we can live forever

I want my work to become part of our visual history, to enter our collective memory and our collective conscience. I hope it will serve to remind us that history's deepest tragedies concern not the great protagonists who set events in motion but the countless ordinary people who are caught up in those events and torn apart by their remorseless fury. I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.

If I had a camera,' I said, 'I'd take a picture of you every day. That way I'd remember how you looked every single day of your life.

It gives you more freedom, the digital camera.

One of the things that I most believe in is the compose and wait philosophy of photography. It’s a very satisfying, almost spiritual way to photograph. Life isn't’ knocking you around, life isn't controlling you. You have picked your place, you’ve picked your scene, you’ve picked your light, you’ve done all the decision making and you are waiting for the moment to come to you.

I don't create blurs. Blurring is not the most important thing; nor is it an identity tag for my pictures.

I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document.

The very idea of photography is as Oliver Wendell Holmes said in the 19th century, "it's a mirror with a memory."

To me, pictures are about memory.

Our pictures are our footprints. It’s the best way to tell people we were here.

I learned working with the negatives could make for better pictures