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
Photographers deal in things which are continuously vanishing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects the transient nature of moments captured in photography.
Henri Cartier-Bresson emphasizes that photographers work with fleeting moments that are constantly disappearing, highlighting the importance of capturing the essence of life as it occurs. This observation suggests that photography is not just about the images created but also about the impermanence and beauty of life itself, as every moment is unique and quickly becomes part of the past.
Themes
PhotographyTransienceMomentsLifeArt
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote during a photography exhibition to reflect on the essence of captured moments.
More from Henri Cartier-Bresson
All quotes βThe 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
You become a different writer when you approach a short story. When things are not always having to represent other things, you find real human beings begin to cautiously appear on your pages.
Zadie SmithRead
A Poem does not grow by jerks. As trees in Spring produce a new ring of tissue, so does every poet put forth a fresh outlay of stuff at the same season.
Wilfred OwenRead
Design is the patterning and planning of any act toward a desired, foreseeable end... any attempt to separate design, to make it a thing-by-itself works, counter to the fact that design is the primary underlying matrix of life.
Victor PapanekRead
My voice is unadorned. I don't try for perfection. I try to be honest and truthful and soulful with the voice I have. If I make mistakes in notes, or there are cracks in notes, I don't fix them. That's the way it is.
Neil DiamondRead
Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world only, our own, we see that world multiply itself and we have at our disposal as many worlds as there are original artists, worlds more different one from the other than those which revolve in infinite space, worlds which, centuries after the extinction of the fire from which their light first emanated, whether it is called Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us still each one its special radiance.
Marcel ProustRead
My directors of photography light my films, but the colours of the sets, furnishings, clothes, hairstyles - that's me. Everything that's in front of the camera, I bring you.
Pedro AlmodovarRead