Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
Geometry is fundamental, but one must not think about it.
Photography is an immediate operation performed by the senses and the mind; it is the world translated into visual terms, simultaneously a ceaseless quest and an interrogation.
A moment ago you asked me if I still took photographs... Well, I’ve just taken one of you, but without a camera—it’s just as good. The top of your glasses is exactly parallel with the top of the frame behind you—quite striking. I couldn’t miss the chance of such symmetry.
(1994)
Photography appears to be an easy activity; in fact, it is a varied and ambiguous process in which the only common denominator among its practitioners is their instrument. What emerges from this recording machine does not escape the economic constraints of a world of waste, of tensions that become increasingly intense and of insane ecological consequences.
I just thought that the camera was a quick way of drawing intuitively.
The flash destroys the secret network of relations that naturally exist between the attentive photographer and his subject. You do not thrash the waters before you start fishing.
As I photograph with my little Leica, I have the feeling that there is something so right about it: with one eye that is closed one looks within. With the other eye that is open one looks without.
If the good Lord had wanted us to take photographs with a 6 by 6, he would have put eyes in our belly.
(On twin-lens Rolleiflex cameras)
