Robert Doisneau
[Photographer, b. 1912, Gentilly, Val-de-Marne, France, d. 1994, Montrouge, France.]

 A hundredth of a second here, a hundredth of a second there—even if you put them end to end, they still only add up to one, two, perhaps three seconds, snatched from eternity. 
 You must not trample on other people’s secret gardens. You must remember: to suggest is to create; to describe is to destroy. 
 The best photos, the ones that are remembered, are the ones that have first passed through the person’s mind before being restored by the camera. 
 If I knew how to take a good photograph, I’d do it every time. 
 I prefer my hesitations, my false paths, my stammering, to a preconceived idea. 
 A memory from my youth comes back to me. You go into the woods on a bike, with a girl. There is the smell of heather, you can hear the wind in the fir trees, you don't dare tell her about your love, but you feel happy, as if you were floating above the ground. Then you look at the clouds beyond the trees and they are fleeting. And you know that within an hour you’ll have to go home, that tomorrow will be a working day. You wish you could stop that moment forever, but you can’t, it is bound to end. So you take a photo, as if to challenge time. 
 Photography is very subjective. Photography is not a document on which a report can be made. It is a subjective document. Photography is a false witness, a lie. 
 For a photographer, the first 70 years are a bit difficult, but after that things get better. 
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