Top 15 Quotes by Henri Cartier-Bresson

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.

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.

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

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.

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.

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.

We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory.

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.

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.

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.