Atik > Atik's Quotes

“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson

“For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson

“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.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers

“It is through living that we discover ourselves, at the same time as we discover the world around us.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson, Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century

“To photograph: it is to put on the same line of sight the head, the eye and the heart.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson

“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.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson

“The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.”
― Henri Cartier Bresson

“For the world is movement, and you cannot be stationary in your attitude toward something that is moving.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Sharpness is a bourgeois concept”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson

“In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a Leitmotiv.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Photographier : c'est mettre sur la même ligne de mire la tête, l'oeil et le coeur.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson

“We 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. We cannot develop and print a memory.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson

“I believe that, through the act of living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us, which can mold us, but which can also be affected by us. A balance must be established between these two worlds—the one inside us and the one outside us.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers

“Photography is simultaneously and instantaneously the recognition of a fact and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that express and signify that fact”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson

“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.
To take photographs means to recognize—simultaneously and within a fraction of a second—both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye, and one's heart on the same axis.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers

“For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to "give a meaning" to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of the mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers

“Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes forever the precise and transitory instant. We photographers deal in things that are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth that can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory. The writer has time to reflect. He can accept and reject, accept again; and before committing his thoughts to paper he is able to tie the several relevant elements together. There is also a period when his brain "forgets," and his subconscious works on classifying his thoughts. But for photographers, what has gone is gone forever.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers

“Für mich besteht die Photographie im gleichzeitigen blitzschnellen Erkennen der inneren Bedeutung der Tatsache einerseits, und auf der anderen Seite des strengen und rückhaltlosen Aufbaus der optisch erfaßbaren Formenwelt, die jede Tatsache zum Ausdruck bringt. Indem wir leben, entdecken wir uns selbst und gleichzeitig die Außenwelt, die auf uns einwirkt, auf die wir aber auch unsererseits einwirken können. Zwischen dieser inneren und äußeren Welt muß ein Gleichgewicht geschaffen werden, die beiden Welten bilden in einem immerwährenden Dialog ein einziges Ganzes, und den Begriff davon müssen wir mitzuteilen suchen.”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers

“Reality offers us such wealth that we must cut some of it out on the spot, simplify. The question is, do we always cut out what we should? ­”
― Henri Cartier-Bresson