Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
I want to prove nothing, demonstrate nothing. Things and beings speak sufficiently.
Think about the photo before and after, never during. The secret is to take your time. You mustn’t go too fast. The subject must forget about you. Then, however, you must be very quick. So, if you miss the picture, you’ve missed it. So what?
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.
When you drop a stone into a well, there's no telling how far it will echo. So it is with photographs. When you allow one to be circulated, it escapes your control.
To take photographs is to hold one’s breath when all faculties converge in the face of fleeing reality. It is at that moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.
Sharpness is a bourgeois concept.
Have you ever tried to peel an apple with a Leica?
(Explaining his lifelong obsession with knives.)
In photography, you’ve got to be quick, quick, quick, like an animal and a prey.
