Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes

Quotes about:

• It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart and head.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Eye, Heart

  1990 Copy quote

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

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Eye, Soul

  108 Copy quote

• Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Forever, Missing

  69 Copy quote

• You just have to live and life will give you pictures.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Giving, Leica

  66 Copy quote

• There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Doe, World, Moments

  11 Copy quote

• Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Intuition, Documentaries

  32 Copy quote

• Sharpness is a bourgeois concept

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Sharpness, Bourgeois

  80 Copy quote

• Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Eye, Expression

  55 Copy quote

• Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Inspirational, Firsts, Photograph

  17 Copy quote

• I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Eternity, Photograph, Instant

  12 Copy quote

• In a portrait, I’m looking for the silence in somebody.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Silence, Portraits

  24 Copy quote

• Photography is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It's a way of life.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Way, Originality

  77 Copy quote

• Nobody takes photographs, photographs take you.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photograph

  11 Copy quote

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

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Heart, Eye, Axes

  Henri Cartier-Bresson, Michael L. Sand (1999). “The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers”

  31 Copy quote

• Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes a precise moment in time.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Mean, Expression

  31 Copy quote

• Photographers deal in things which are continuously vanishing.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Vanishing, Photographer

  4 Copy quote

• For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Book, Intuition

  Henri Cartier-Bresson, Michael L. Sand (1999). “The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers”

  70 Copy quote

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

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Details, Littles

  Henri Cartier-Bresson, Michael L. Sand (1999). “The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers”

  78 Copy quote

• Photography is like fencing. You must keep your distance, wait, and then thrust.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Distance, Waiting

  14 Copy quote

• Life is once. Forever.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Forever, Life Is

  20 Copy quote

• Give me inspiration over information.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Inspiration, Giving, Information

  7 Copy quote

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

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Inspiring, Photography, Second Chance

  Henri Cartier-Bresson, Michael L. Sand (1999). “The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers”

  82 Copy quote

• Poetry is the essence of everything, and it’s through deep contact with reality and living fully that you reach poetry. Very often I see photographers cultivating the strangeness or awkwardness of a scene, thinking it is poetry. No. Poetry is two elements which are suddenly conflict — a spark between two elements. But it’s given very seldom, and you can’t look for it. It’s like if you look for inspiration. No, it just comes by enriching yourself and living.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Inspiration, Reality, Thinking

  10 Copy quote

• I'm not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It's drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, and then sniff, sniff, sniff - being sensitive to coincidence. You can't go looking for it; you can't want it, or you won't get it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Self, Intuition

  49 Copy quote

• It is through living that we discover ourselves, at the same time as we discover the world around us.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  World

  Henri Cartier-Bresson, Peter Galassi, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2010). “Henri Cartier-Bresson: the modern century”, Hubsta Ltd

  22 Copy quote

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