Lincoln Kirstein
[Writer, critic, and impresario, b. 1907, Rochester, New York, d. 1996, New York.]
The candid camera is the greatest liar in the photographic family.... It is anarchic, naïve, and superficial.
While photography to Cartier-Bresson is constantly an intuitive process, it is never purely instinctive. It is founded on continuous intellection, on ceaseless consideration during all moments previous to, or preparatory for, the pressing. It does not only operate in the blinding flash of a moment seized; it works all the time. The snatched picture merely cuts across the vein of observable incident or accident which is always beating, whether or not the fingers actually press.
