The camera is for us a tool, not a pretty mechanical toy ... people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing.
Henri Cartier-BressonRead
I'm not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It's drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, and then sniff, sniff, sniff - being sensitive to coincidence. You can't go looking for it; you can't want it, or you won't get it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes that photography transcends mere documentation and requires an intuitive and immersive experience.
Henri Cartier-Bresson expresses that true photography is not simply about capturing images; it is an intuitive art form that involves losing oneself to fully engage with the moment. He suggests that the essence of photography comes from sensitivity to spontaneity and coincidence, rather than from a deliberate search for it, highlighting the importance of surrendering to the creative process.
Themes
PhotographyIntuitionArtCoincidenceExperience
In practice
Example use cases
During a photography workshop, the instructor can use this quote to convey the importance of intuition in capturing images.
More from Henri Cartier-Bresson
All quotes →The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.
Henri Cartier-BressonRead
Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical aspects, which for me are not important.
Henri Cartier-BressonRead
Photographier: c'est mettre sur la meme ligne de mire la tete, l'oeil et le coeur.
Henri Cartier-BressonRead
Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.
Henri Cartier-BressonRead
Pictures, regardless of how they are created and recreated, are intended to be looked at. This brings to the forefront not the technology of imaging, which of course is important, but rather what we might call the eyenology (seeing).
Henri Cartier-BressonRead
Similar quotes
On a bike, being just slightly above pedestrian and car eye level, one gets a perfect view of the goings-on in one's own town.
David ByrneRead
Art is uncompromising, and life is full of compromises.
Gunter GrassRead
Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited - that has music and rhythm and time.
Frank OceanRead
Part of the particular interest and beauty of science fiction and fantasy: writer and reader collaborate in world-making.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
Till now I have never shot a scene without taking account of what stands behind the actors because the relationship between people and their surroundings is of prime importance.
Michelangelo AntonioniRead
Look, Hollywood's a mecca, but it's not the final answer. You pick up a camera anyplace in the world, you can make a movie.
Robert DuvallRead