Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes

If I am asked about the photographer’s role in our times, the power of the image and so on, I do not want to launch into explanations. I only know that people who know how to look are as rare as those who know how to listen.

Photography is solitary work. There is emulation. It is interesting to know what other people do. Even so, writers do not read everything that is published. A painter does not look at everything. You have to choose. It’s reality, it’s life that is important. We shouldn’t be sniffing around each other all the time, looking....

Anybody can take photographs. I have seen in the Herald Tribune some taken by a monkey that managed, with a Polaroid camera, as well as some camera owners. It is precisely because our profession is open to everyone that it remains, in spite of its fascinating ease, extremely difficult.

You have to have some psychological insight, you have to know the people and you must work in a way that’s acceptable to them. There you must smile — never laugh, because that’s considered making fun. Smile, take your time, and never come bursting in with your own personality. You have to lie low. Of course you can push and perhaps raise your voice a notch, but like a sensitive emulsion, a sensitive plate. Approach gently, tenderly, and never intrude, never push. Otherwise, if you use your elbows, it will work against you. Above all, be human!

I think cynicism is the worst thing because it kills everything. There’s no more honesty, no more poetry, no more freshness. Cynicism is the worst thing — a kind of smart person who’s got all the answers. This is death. It kills creation. There’s no love, no tenderness, nothing at all left. There’s no hatred even, nothing. Equally dangerous is the detached attitude that says, “Everything is fun!”

I hate looking at photography books or illustrated magazines. This is not because of contempt. I’d rather look at contact sheets: that is where you can sense the individual.

The picture-story involves a joint operation of the brain, the eye and the heart. The objective of this joint operation is to depict the content of some event which is in the process of unfolding, and to communicate impressions. Sometimes a single event can be so rich in itself and its facets that it is necessary to move all around it in your search for the solution to the problems it poses — for the world is movement, and you cannot be stationary in your attitude toward something that is moving. Sometimes you light upon the picture in seconds; it might also require hours or days. But there is no standard plan, no pattern from which to work.

You have to look, and looking is so difficult. We are used to thinking. We reflect all the time, well or not, but people are not taught how to look. It takes a very long time.

Photography has never been a problem for me, [what is important] is looking, the way of looking, of questioning with your eyes: I don’t think; I am impulsive, it is /looking/ that’s important, not photography. Now, since I have started drawing, I’ve merely switched tools, but it is still looking that’s important. To look the right way, one should learn to become a deaf-mute.

Photography has fulfilled my adventurous side: it is a real trade. I behaved like a thief in every country where I went, in China, in Africa, in America… all things considered, our trade is situated somewhere between pickpocket and tightrope walker… yes, we steal from people, we take something that belongs to them: their image, their culture.

Nobody at Magnum decides for the other what he should do and everyone is free to tell someone else: “Well, what about this story? I don’t like it for this and that reason — because of this picture.” It is extremely fruitful to have somebody to talk to as an equal. This give and take is a most profitable thing because we keep learning from each other. I keep learning from the younger members just as I learned from Bob [Robert] Capa and Chim [David Seymour] how to make picture stories. Cornell Capa, for instance, has a very keen journalistic sense; and as for the other photographer, each makes his own contribution. Everybody in Magnum has full freedom; there’s no doctrine, there is no school, but there is something that unites all of us very strongly — I can’t define it; it may be a certain feeling of freedom and a respect for reality.

I am a visual man. I watch, watch, watch. I understand things through my eyes.

A contact sheet is so interesting, because you see how a photographer thinks. He comes closer and closer to a subject, corrects it, looks at it again, and then with tiny movements turns around until it is in exactly the right and exact relation to him. Contact sheets may be compared to the way you drive a nail into a plank. First you give several light taps to build up a rhythm and align the nail with the wood. Then, much more quickly, and with as few strokes as possible, you hit the nail forcefully on the head and drive it in.

I believe creative work needs communication. So it’s extremely encouraging to be with a group of people who form a community and to know that you’re not isolated, although as individuals we must always work in an inner silence.

This book [Zen in the Art of Archery], by Herrigel, which I discovered a few years ago, seems to me fundamental to our profession as photographers. Matisse wrote similarly about drawing: set a discipline, make rigor a rule, forget oneself completely. And in photography the attitude must be the same: detach oneself, do not try to prove anything at all. My sense of freedom is the same: a frame that allows any variation. This is the basis of Zen Buddhism, the evidence: that you go in with great force and then you succeed in forgetting yourself.