Henri Cartier-Bresson On Photography

Every word presented here are Henri's words (and images).  He is my photographic heart. 



They’re quick things and there’s a whole world in them. - Henri Cartier-Bresson on 'a photograph'.

Nothing worth knowing can be taught.

That’s a wonderful thing with a camera. It jumps out of you. I’m extremely impulsive. Terribly. It’s really a pain in the neck for my friends and family. I’m a bunch of nerves. But I take advantage of it in photography. I never think. I set, quick! I hit!

Composition is Geometry.

Photography is instant drawing. 

The camera is a way of drawing.

 Anarchism is an ethic. It's a way of behaving. 

 I just thought that the camera was a quick way of drawing intuitively.

Its a way of living and looking.

The best pictures were in that book, “The Decisive Moment.”

That’s why teaching and learning is nothing. It’s living and looking. All these photography schools are a gimmick. What are they teaching? Could you teach me how to walk?

Q.

Josef Breitenbach, the photographer, once told me that he felt most good photographers were good from the beginning.

A.

I agree. Either you have a gift or you have none. If you have a gift, well, it’s a responsibility. You have to work.

 I don’t know if photography is an art or not an art. I have no idea of all this.

That’s why there shouldn’t be any captions. People should just look. We should awaken our sensitivity. I think photographs should have no caption, just location and date. Date is important because things change.

when something happens, you have to be extremely swift. Like an animal and a prey — vroom! You grasp it and people don’t notice that you have taken it. 

I enjoy very much seeing a good photographer working. There’s an elegance, just like in a bullfight.

But the most difficult thing for me is not street photography. It’s a portrait. The difference between a portrait and a snapshot is that in a portrait, a person agreed to be photographed. But certainly it’s like a biologist and his microscope. When you study the thing, it doesn’t react as when it’s not studied. And you have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt, which is not an easy thing, because you steal something. The strange thing is that you see people naked through your viewfinder. And it’s sometimes very embarrassing.

I was to draw this afternoon. I carry a camera. I don’t know. It depends. I don’t plan life, period. I would like to draw much more calmly and I would like to see other photographers. You see, I feel very lonely in a way. 

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 involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.

To take a photograph is to hold one’s breath when all faculties converge in a face of fleeing reality. It is at that moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.

To take a photograph 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‚ head, one‚ eye, and one‚ heart on the same axis. 

The Decisive Moment—originally called Images à la Sauvette—is one of the most famous books in the history of photography, assembling Cartier-Bresson’s best work from his early years. Published in 1952 by Simon and Schuster, New York, in collaboration with Editions Verve, Paris, it was lavishly embellished with a collage cover by Henri Matisse. The book and its images have since influenced generations of photographers. Its English title has defined the notion of the famous formal peak in which all elements in the photographic frame accumulate to form the perfect image. Paired with the artist’s humanist viewpoint, Cartier-Bresson’s photography has become part of the world’s collective memory.

Henri Cartier-Bresson (August 22, 1908 – August 3, 2004) was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35 mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment. His work has influenced many photographers.

Copyright © 2017 Patti Friday, All rights reserved. I pen the weekly 'Friday Newsletter'. Please sign up! Patti Friday: Author | Carries A Camera | Reporting from inside 'The Art Dept.' at the international 'Embassy of Ideas' CANADA