Frasi di Henri Cartier-Bresson (64 frasi) | Citazioni e frasi celebri

The Decisive Moment (1952), p. i; also in The Mind's Eye (1999)
Contesto: 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.

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

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

“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? ”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

“How do you make your pictures?
— I don’t know, it’s not important.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

“If there is one point, it's humanity, it's life, the richness of life. The thing is simply to be sensitive.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

“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.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Origine: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Only Geometricians May Enter: Interview with Yves Bourde (1974), p. 62

“The picture-story involves a joint operation of the brain, the eye and the heart.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson libro The Decisive Moment

“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.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Origine: Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers

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

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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.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Sharpness is a bourgeois concept”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

“We had a certain idea of our work, a respect for others, and above all, [we were determined] not to be paparazzi. For the photographer, curiosity is essential, the terrible counterpart is indiscretion, which is a lack of restraint.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Origine: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Photographing Is Nothing, Looking Is Everything! Interview with Philippe Boegner (1989), p. 115

“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!””

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Origine: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Conversation. Interview with Byron Dobell (1957), p. 38

“There are photographers who invent, others who discover. Personally, I am interested in discoveries, not for the trials or experiences but to capture life itself. I flee from the dangers of the anecdote and the picturesque, which are very easy and better than sensational, but quite as bad. To my mind, photography has the power to evoke, and must not simply document. We have to be abstract, just like nature.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Origine: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, To Seize Life: Interview with Yvonne Baby (1961), p. 44

“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.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Origine: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Photographing Is Nothing, Looking Is Everything! Interview with Philippe Boegner (1989), p. 114

“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….”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Origine: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, The Main Thing Is Looking: Interview with Alain Desvergnes (1979), p. 75

“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.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Origine: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, The Main Thing Is Looking: Interview with Alain Desvergnes (1979), p. 70

“For me, the great myth is the Greek myth of Antaeus, who had to touch Earth to regain his strength. I know I must always keep in contact with the concrete, concrete reality, the small incident and the small, specific truth, which might have wide reverberations.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Origine: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Conversation. Interview with Byron Dobell (1957), p. 32

“But with photography as with drawing or painting, once it is done I want to know whether it holds together or not. That is the real critique. I couldn’t care less if the person to whom I show what I do likes it or not — it takes all sorts to make a world and all that. To criticize is to put oneself in someone else’s shoes and try to figure out what they wanted to do. Only the “why” of things is important to me.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Origine: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, We Always Talk Too Much: Conversation with Pierre Assouline (1994), p. 132

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

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

"An island of pleasure gond adrift" in LIFE magazine (15 March 1963), p. 42

“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.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Origine: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Photographing Is Nothing, Looking Is Everything! Interview with Philippe Boegner (1989), p. 113

“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.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Origine: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, To Seize Life: Interview with Yvonne Baby (1961), p. 45

“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.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Origine: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Conversation. Interview with Byron Dobell (1957), pp. 34-35

“When you use a camera, your visual concentration is intense, as it is when you draw. But if you overshoot, your contact sheet is likely to become a jumble of peelings. You need a lot of sand to discover a nugget. Shooting is a play between pickpocketing and tightrope walking; an endless play, fraught with huge tension.”

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Henri Cartier-Bresson

Origine: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, An Endless Play: Interview with Gilles Mora (1986), p. 102