Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]

 I love painting. As far as photography is concerned, I understand nothing. 
 The only thing about photography which interests me is the aim, the taking aim. 
 The world is going to pieces and people like Adams and Weston are photographing rocks! (1930s) 
 I was marked, not by Surrealist painting, but by the conceptions of Breton [which] satisfied me a great deal: the role of spontaneous expression and of intuition and, above all, the attitude of revolt. 
 I regard myself still as an amateur, though I am no longer a dilettante. (Introduction to The Decisive Moment, 1952) 
 Thinking should be done beforehand and afterwards—never while actually taking a photograph. 
 What do you think I’m a professor of? The little finger? (On offers of honorary doctorates.) 
 [Photography] can be like a passionate kiss, but also like a gunshot or a psychoanalyst’s couch. 
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