Bresson Photographer Quotes & Sayings

It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

There are those who insist that it is a very bad thing to question God. To them, "why?" is a rude question. That depends, I believe, on whether it is an honest search, in faith, for His meaning, or whether it is the challenge of unbelief and rebellion. — Elisabeth Elliot

this was a time and a land where enchantments were swiftly made and broken — Shirley Jackson

In every photographer there is something of a stroller. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

Don't say I hate institutionalised religion - rather than saying I hate those things, which I do not, what I'm saying is that perhaps there is a way of opening more doors, rather than closing so many. — Lady Gaga

I am neither an economist nor a photographer of monuments, and I am not much of a journalist either. What I am trying to do more than anything else is to observe life. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

We don't just live in a celebrity take-down culture; we live in a take-down culture. People will find anything about you and twist it to where it's weird or wrong or annoying or strange or bad. You have to live your life not only in spite of people who don't understand you - you have to have more fun than they do. — Taylor Swift

All religions have honored the beggar. For he proves that in a matter at the same time as prosaic and holy, banal and regenerative as the giving of alms, intellect and morality, consistency and principles are miserably inadequate. — Walter Benjamin

If you want to have a career, my advice is don't get married. You think things have changed and there's some kind of gender equality now, that men are different, but I've got news for you. They're not. — Jeffrey Eugenides

A black man singing about a blond girl was potential trouble. — Charley Pride

One eye of the photographer looks wide open through the viewfinder, the other, the closed looks into his own soul. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

The intensive use of photographs by mass media lays ever fresh responsibilities upon the photographer. We have to acknowledge the existence of a chasm between the economic needs of our consumer society and the requirements of those who bear witness to this epoch. This affects us all, particularly the younger generations of photographers. We must take greater care than ever not to allow ourselves to be separated from the real world and from humanity. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

A photographer's eye is perpetually evaluating. A photographer can bring coincidence of line simply by moving his head a fraction of a millimetre. He can modify perspectives by a slight bending of the knees. By placing the camera closer to or farther from the subject, he draws a detail. But he composes a picture in very nearly the same amount of time it takes to click the shutter, at the speed of a reflex action. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

They ... asked me: 'How do you make your pictures?' I was puzzled ... I said, I don't know, it's not important. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

The decisive moment, the popular Henri Cartier-Bresson approach to photography in which a scene is stopped and depicted at a certain point of high visual drama, is now possible to achieve at any time. One's photographs, years later, may be retroactively rephotographed by repositioning the photographer or the subject of the photograph, or by adding elements that were never there before but now are made to exist concurrently in a newly elastic sense of space and time. — Fred Ritchin

I'm a big fan of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the French photographer who had that whole "decisive moment" approach to taking pictures, of having multiple elements line up within the frame. — Nick Zinner

A photographer must always work with the greatest respect for his subject and in terms of his own point of view. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

A photographer is part pick-pocket and part tightrope dancer. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

The trouble with my generation is that we all think we're fucking geniuses. Making something isn't good enough for us, and neither is selling something, or teaching something, or even just doing something; we have to be something. — Nick Hornby

I enjoy very much seeing a good photographer working. There's an elegance, just like in a bullfight. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does - in his own words. His own words will always be better than your words, even if you are the most elegant stylist in the land. — William Zinsser

I don't like gimmicky pictures; I've always hated them. I like pictures that are very clear and clean, whether you're a great street photographer - somebody like Friedlander or Winogrand or Cartier-Bresson - or whether you're a portraitist, like Irving Penn. — Mary Ellen Mark

Cheap food is an illusion. There is no such thing as cheap food. The real cost of the food is paid somewhere. And if it isn't paid at the cash register, it's charged to the environment or to the public purse in the form of subsidies. And it's charged to your health. — Michael Pollan

This life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. — Venerable Bede

The personality and style of a photographer usually limits the type of subject with which he deals best. For example Cartier-Bresson is very interested in people and in travel; these things plus his precise feeling for geometrical relationships determine the type of pictures he takes best. What is of value is that a particular photographer sees the subject differently. A good picture must be a completely individual expression which intrigues the viewer and forces him to think. — Alexey Brodovitch

After my tour I had time to stay at home, be with my boyfriend and hang out with friends and that brought me down to earth and helped me write music from a more relaxed place. — Adam Lambert